er; "ask for the young queen's picture, and
you would soon have to put your shirt on, and go up the shaft."

"It's them long reckonings that force us to the tommy shops," said
another collier; "and if a butty turns you away because you won't take
no tommy, you're a marked man in every field about."*

*A Butty in the mining districts is a middleman: a Doggy
is his manager. The Butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truck
shop and pays the wages of his labourers in goods. When
miners and colliers strike they term it, "going to play."

"There's wus things as tommy," said a collier who had hitherto been
silent, "and that's these here butties. What's going on in the pit is
known only to God Almighty and the colliers. I have been a consistent
methodist for many years, strived to do well, and all the harm I have
ever done to the butties was to tell them that their deeds would not
stand on the day of judgment.

"They are deeds of darkness surely; for many's the morn we work for
nothing, by one excuse or another, and many's the good stint that they
undermeasure. And many's the cup of their ale that you must drink before
they will give you any work. If the queen would do something for us poor
men, it would be a blessed job."

"There ayn't no black tyrant on this earth like a butty, surely," said a
collier; "and there's no redress for poor men."

"But why do not you state your grievances to the landlords and lessees,"
said the stranger.

"I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir," said Master Nixon,
following up this remark by a most enormous puff. He was the oracle of
his circle, and there was silence whenever he was inclined to address
them, which was not too often, though when he spoke, his words, as his
followers often observed, were a regular ten-yard coal.

"I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir, or else you would know
that it's as easy for a miner to speak to a mainmaster, as it is for me
to pick coal with this here clay. Sir, there's a gulf atween 'em. I went
into the pit when I was five year old, and I count forty year in the
service come Martinmas, and a very good age, sir, for a man what does
his work, and I knows what I'm speaking about. In forty year, sir, a man
sees a pretty deal, 'specially when he don't move out of the same spot
and keeps his 'tention. I've been at play, sir, several times in
forty year, and have seen as great stick-outs as ever happened in this
country. I've s