x o'clock on Monday morning, and he seemed to sleep
all day; then in the night we heard him talking, and this morning he
asked for you. So I wired, and we fetched the doctor."

"Will you have a fire made?"

Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still.

The doctor came. It was pneumonia, and, he said, a peculiar erysipelas,
which had started under the chin where the collar chafed, and was
spreading over the face. He hoped it would not get to the brain.

Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse. She prayed for William, prayed that he
would recognise her. But the young man's face grew more discoloured.
In the night she struggled with him. He raved, and raved, and would not
come to consciousness. At two o'clock, in a dreadful paroxysm, he died.

Mrs. Morel sat perfectly still for an hour in the lodging bedroom; then
she roused the household.

At six o'clock, with the aid of the charwoman, she laid him out; then
she went round the dreary London village to the registrar and the
doctor.

At nine o'clock to the cottage on Scargill Street came another wire:

"William died last night. Let father come, bring money."

Annie, Paul, and Arthur were at home; Mr. Morel was gone to work. The
three children said not a word. Annie began to whimper with fear; Paul
set off for his father.

It was a beautiful day. At Brinsley pit the white steam melted slowly in
the sunshine of a soft blue sky; the wheels of the headstocks twinkled
high up; the screen, shuffling its coal into the trucks, made a busy
noise.

"I want my father; he's got to go to London," said the boy to the first
man he met on the bank.

"Tha wants Walter Morel? Go in theer an' tell Joe Ward."

Paul went into the little top office.

"I want my father; he's got to go to London."

"Thy feyther? Is he down? What's his name?"

"Mr. Morel."

"What, Walter? Is owt amiss?"

"He's got to go to London."

The man went to the telephone and rang up the bottom office.

"Walter Morel's wanted, number 42, Hard. Summat's amiss; there's his lad
here."

Then he turned round to Paul.

"He'll be up in a few minutes," he said.

Paul wandered out to the pit-top. He watched the chair come up, with its
wagon of coal. The great iron cage sank back on its rest, a full carfle
was hauled off, an empty tram run on to the chair, a bell ting'ed
somewhere, the chair heaved, then dropped like a stone.

Paul did not realise William was dead; it was impossible, with such
a bust