‘I’d like a word with you, John,’ he said, ’if your friend’ll excuse.’

Hewett rose from the table, and they walked together to an unoccupied spot.

‘Have you heard any talk about the Burial Club?’ inquired the man, in a low voice of suspicion, knitting his eyebrows.

‘Heard anything?  No.  What?’

’Why, Dick Smales says he can’t get the money for his boy, as died last week.’

‘Can’t get it?  Why not?’

‘That’s just what I want to know.  Some o’ the chaps is talkin’ about it upstairs.  M’Cosh ain’t been seen for four or five days.  Somebody had news as he was ill in bed, and now there’s no findin’ him.  I’ve got a notion there’s something wrong, my boy.’

Hewett’s eyes grew large and the muscles of his mouth contracted.

‘Where’s Jenkins?’ he asked abruptly.  ‘I suppose he can explain it?’

‘No, by God, he can’t!  He won’t say nothing, but he’s been runnin’ about all yesterday and to-day, lookin’ precious queer,

Without paying any further attention to Snowdon, John left the room with his companion, and they went upstairs.  Most of the men present were members of the Burial Club in question, an institution of some fifteen years’ standing and in connection with the club which met here for social and political purposes; they were in the habit, like John Hewett, of depositing their coppers weekly, thus insuring themselves or their relatives for a sum payable at death.  The rumour that something was wrong, that the secretary M’Cosh could not be found, began to create a disturbance; presently the nigger entertainment came to an end, and the Burial Club was the sole topic of conversation.

On the morrow it was an ascertained fact that one of the catastrophes which occasionally befall the provident among wage-earners had come to pass.  Investigation showed that for a long time there had been carelessness and mismanagement of funds, and that fraud had completed the disaster.  M’Cosh was wanted by the police.

To John Hewett the blow was a terrible one.  In spite of his poverty, he had never fallen behind with those weekly payments.  The thing he dreaded supremely was, that his wife or one of the children should die and he be unable to provide a decent burial.  At the death of the last child born to him the club had of course paid, and the confidence he felt in it for the future was a sensible support under the many miseries of his life, a support of which no idea can be formed by one who has never foreseen the possibility of those dear to him being carried to a pauper’s grave.  It was a touching fact that he still kept up the payment for Clara; who could say but his daughter might yet come back to him to die?  To know that he had lost that one stronghold against fate was a stroke that left him scarcely strength to go about his daily work.