ad no pulse. He had no friends there. "I'll stand by the body," said
the comely dame, "though I lose my turn."

At this moment, Stephen Morley, for the reader has doubtless discovered
that the stranger who held colloquy with the colliers was the friend
of Walter Gerard, arrived at the tommy-shop, which was about half-way
between the house where he had passed the night and Wodgate. He stopped,
inquired, and being a man of science and some skill, decided, after
examining the poor boy, that life was not extinct. Taking the elder
Diggs aside, he said, "I am the editor of the Mowbray Phalanx; I will
not speak to you before these people; but I tell you fairly you and your
son have been represented to me as oppressors of the people. Will it be
my lot to report this death and comment on it? I trust not. There is yet
time and hope."

"What is to be done, sir," inquired the alarmed Mr Diggs; "a
fellow-creature in this condition--"

"Don't talk but act," said Morley. "There is no time to be lost. The boy
must be taken up stairs and put to bed; a warm bed, in one of your best
rooms, with every comfort. I am pressed for business, but I will wait
and watch over him till the crisis is passed. Come, let you and I take
him in our arms, and carry him up stairs through your private door.
Every minute is precious." And so saying, Morley and the elder Diggs
entered the house.

Book 3 Chapter 4

Wodgate, or Wogate, as it was called on the map, was a district that
in old days had been consecrated to Woden, and which appeared destined
through successive ages to retain its heathen character. At the
beginning of the revolutionary war, Wodgate was a sort of squatting
district of the great mining region to which it was contiguous, a place
where adventurers in the industry which was rapidly developing, settled
themselves; for though the great veins of coal and ironstone cropped up,
as they phrase it, before they reached this bare and barren land, and
it was thus deficient in those mineral and metallic treasures which had
enriched its neighbourhood, Wodgate had advantages of its own, and of a
kind which touch the fancy of the lawless. It was land without an owner;
no one claimed any manorial right over it; they could build cottages
without paying rent. It was a district recognized by no parish; so there
were no tithes, and no meddlesome supervision. It abounded in fuel which
cost nothing, for though the veins were not worth working as