s, and talked about rising
the price of the allotment grounds. Allotment, did she say? and how did
he lose his allotment?--didn't he drink, drink, drink, till he had to
hand over his allotment to the landlord of the pothouse, and did not
they take it away from both as soon as they heard of it? Served him
right. They had not got a pound of potatoes, and the children did use to
lick up the potato-pot liquor as if they liked it.

Smith asked where Polly was, but that was only a signal for a fresh
outburst. Polly, if he'd a looked after her she would have been all
right. (Smith turned a sharp glance at her in some alarm at this.)
Letting a great girl like that go about at night by herself while he
was a drink, drink, drinking, and there she was now, the bad hussy, gone
to the workhouse to lie in. (Smith winced.) _She_ never disgraced
herself like that; and if he had sent the wench to service, or stopped
her going down to that pothouse with the fellows, this would not have
happened. She always told him how it would end. He was a
good-for-nothing, drunken brute of a man, and had brought her to all
this misery; and she began sobbing.

After twelve long hours of toil, including the walk to and fro, exposed
to the bitter cold, with but a slice of cheese to support the strength
of that brawny chest, this welcome to his supper was more than the
sturdy, silent man could bear. With a dull remembrance of the happy
sunlit summer, twenty years ago, when Martha was a plump, laughing girl,
of sloe-black eyes and nut-brown complexion--with a glimpse of that
merry courting time passing across his mind, Smith got up and walked out
into the dark rainy night. "Ay, thee bist agoing to the liquor again,"
were the last words he heard as he shut the door.

It was too true. But what labourer, let us ask, with a full conception
of the circumstances, would blame him? Here there was nothing but hard
and scanty fare, no heat, no light, nothing to cheer the heart, nothing
to cause it to forget the toil of the day and the thought of the morrow,
no generous liquor sung by poets to warm the physical man. But only a
few yards farther down the road there was a great house, with its
shutters cosily closed, ablaze with heat and light, echoing with merry
laughter and song. There was an array of good fellows ready to welcome
him, to tell him the news, to listen eagerly to what he could tell them,
to ask him to drink, and to drink from his cup in boon companio