Mr. Holdfast’s eye sparkled like a diamond.  “I’ll make the round,” said he.  “And, Mr. Little, perhaps you will be kind enough to go with me, and let me question you, on the road.  I have no sub-editor; no staff; I carry the whole journal on my head.  Every day is a hard race between Time and me, and not a minute to spare.”

Mr. Cheetham was expected at the works this afternoon:  so Henry, on leaving Mr. Holdfast, returned to them, and found him there with Bayne, looking, disconsolately, over a dozen orders for carving-tools.

“Glad to see you again, my lad,” said Cheetham.  “Why, you look all the better.”

“I’m none the worse, sir.”

“Come to take your balance and leave me?” This was said half plaintively, half crossly.

“If you wish it, sir.”

“Not I. How is it to be?”

“Well, sir, I say to you what you said to me the other day, Stick to me, and I’ll stick to you.”

“I’ll stick to you.”

Bayne held up his hands piteously to them both.

“What sir?” faltered he, turning to Cheetham, “after all your experience!” then to Henry, “What, fight the Trades, after the lesson they have given you?”

“I’ll fight them all the more for that,” said Henry, grinding his teeth; “fight them till all is blue.”

“So will I. That for the Trades!”

“Heaven help you both!” groaned Bayne, and looked the picture of despair.

“You promised me shutters, with a detonator, sir.”

“Ay, but you objected.”

“That was before they blew me up.”

“Just so.  Shutters shall be hung to-morrow; and the detonators I’ll fix myself.”

“Thank you, sir.  Would you mind engaging a watchman?”

“Hum?  Not—­if you will share the expense.”

“I’ll pay one-third.”

“Why should I pay two thirds?  It is not like shutters and Bramah locks:  they are property.  However, he’ll be good against rattening; and you have lost a fortnight, and there are a good many orders.  Give me a good day’s work, and we won’t quarrel over the watchman.”  He then inquired, rather nervously, whether there was anything more.

“No, sir:  we are agreed.  And I’ll give you good work, and full time.”

The die was cast, and now he must go home and face his mother.  For the first time this many years he was half afraid to go near her.  He dreaded remonstrances and tears:  tears that he could not dry; remonstrances that would worry him, but could not shake him.

This young man, who had just screwed his physical courage up to defy the redoubtable Unions had a fit of moral cowardice, and was so reluctant to encounter the gentlest woman in England, that he dined at a chop-house, and then sauntered into a music hall, and did not get home till past ten, meaning to say a few kind, hurried words, then yawn, and slip to bed.