But the doctor had stated that the old Irishman would never be good to work again; and Hal saw a shadow of terror cross the sunshine of Mrs. Rafferty’s rejoicing. How could a doctor say a thing like that? Rafferty was old, to be sure; but he was tough—and could any doctor imagine how hard a man would try who had a family looking to him? Sure, he was not the one to give up for a bit of pain now and then! Besides him, there was only Tim who was earning; and though Tim was a good lad, and worked steady, any doctor ought to know that a big family could not be kept going on the wages of one eighteen-year-old pit-boy. As for the other lads, there was a law that said they were too young to work. Mrs. Rafferty thought there should be someone to put a little sense into the heads of them that made the laws—for if they wanted to forbid children to work in coal-mines, they should surely provide some other way to feed the children.
Hal listened, agreeing sympathetically, and meantime watching her, and learning more from her actions than from her words. She had been obedient to the teachings of her religion, to be fruitful and multiply; she had fed three grown sons into the maw of industry, and had still eight children and a man to care for. Hal wondered if she had ever rested a single minute of daylight in all her fifty-four years. Certainly not while he had been in her house! Even now, while praising the Rafferty God and blaming the capitalist lawmakers, she was getting a supper, moving swiftly, silently, like a machine. She was lean as an old horse that has toiled across a desert; the skin over her cheekbones was tight as stretched rubber, and cords stood out in her wrists like piano-wires.
And now she was cringing before the spectre of destitution. He asked what she would do about it, and saw the shadow of terror cross her face again. There was one recourse from starvation, it seemed—to have her children taken from her, and put in some institution! At the mention of this, one of the special nightmares of the poor, the old woman began to sob and cry again that the doctor was wrong; he would see, and Hal would see—Old Rafferty would be back at his job in a week or two!
II
Hal went out on the street again. It was the hour which would have been sunset in a level region; the tops of the mountains were touched with a purple light, and the air was fresh and chill with early fall. Down the darkening streets he saw a gathering of men; there was shouting, and people running towards the place, so he hurried up, with the thought in his mind, “What’s the matter now?” There were perhaps a hundred men crying out, their voices mingling like the sound of waves on the sea. He could make out words: “Go on! Go on! We’ve had enough of it! Hurrah!”
“What’s happened?” he asked, of someone on the outskirts; and the man, recognising him, raised a cry which ran through the throng: “Joe Smith! He’s the boy for us! Come in here, Joe! Give us a speech!”
But even while Hal was asking questions, trying to get the situation clear, other shouts had drowned out his name. “We’ve had enough of them walking over us!” And somebody cried, more loudly, “Tell us about it! Tell it again! Go on!”
A man was standing upon the steps of a building at one side. Hal stared in amazement; it was Tim Rafferty. Of all people in the world—Tim, the lighthearted and simple, Tim of the laughing face and the merry Irish blue eyes! Now his sandy hair was tousled and his features distorted with rage. “Him near dead!” he yelled. “Him with his voice gone, and couldn’t move his hand! Eleven years he’s slaved for them, and near killed in an accident that’s their own fault—every man in this crowd knows it’s their own fault, by God!”
“Sure thing! You’re right!” cried a chorus of voices “Tell it all!”
“They give him twenty-five dollars and his hospital expenses—and what’ll his hospital expenses be? They’ll have him out on the street again before he’s able to stand. You know that—they done it to Pete Cullen!”
“You bet they did!”
“Them damned lawyers in there—gettin’ ’em to sign papers when they don’t know what they’re doin’. An’ me that might help him can’t get near! By Christ, I say it’s too much! Are we slaves, or are we dogs, that we have to stand such things?”
“We’ll stand no more of it!” shouted one. “We’ll go in there and see to it ourselves!”
“Come on!” shouted another. “To hell with their gunmen!”
Hal pushed his way into the crowd. “Tim!” he cried. “How do you know this?”
“There’s a fellow in there seen it.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you—they’d fire him; but it’s somebody you know as well as me. He come and told me. They’re beatin’ me old father out of damages!”
“They do it all the time!” shouted Wauchope, an English miner at Hal’s side. “That’s why they won’t let us in there.”
“They done the same thing to my father!” put in another voice. Hal recognised Andy, the Greek boy.
“And they want to start Number Two in the mornin’!” yelled Tim. “Who’ll go down there again? And with Alec Stone, him that damns
