le going on. The puller-off swung the small truck on to the
turn-table, another man ran with it along the bank down the curving
lines.

"And William is dead, and my mother's in London, and what will she be
doing?" the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum.

He watched chair after chair come up, and still no father. At last,
standing beside a wagon, a man's form! the chair sank on its rests,
Morel stepped off. He was slightly lame from an accident.

"Is it thee, Paul? Is 'e worse?"

"You've got to go to London."

The two walked off the pit-bank, where men were watching curiously. As
they came out and went along the railway, with the sunny autumn field on
one side and a wall of trucks on the other, Morel said in a frightened
voice:

"'E's niver gone, child?"

"Yes."

"When wor't?"

"Last night. We had a telegram from my mother."

Morel walked on a few strides, then leaned up against a truck-side,
his hand over his eyes. He was not crying. Paul stood looking round,
waiting. On the weighing machine a truck trundled slowly. Paul saw
everything, except his father leaning against the truck as if he were
tired.

Morel had only once before been to London. He set off, scared and
peaked, to help his wife. That was on Tuesday. The children were left
alone in the house. Paul went to work, Arthur went to school, and Annie
had in a friend to be with her.

On Saturday night, as Paul was turning the corner, coming home from
Keston, he saw his mother and father, who had come to Sethley Bridge
Station. They were walking in silence in the dark, tired, straggling
apart. The boy waited.

"Mother!" he said, in the darkness.

Mrs. Morel's small figure seemed not to observe. He spoke again.

"Paul!" she said, uninterestedly.

She let him kiss her, but she seemed unaware of him.

In the house she was the same--small, white, and mute. She noticed
nothing, she said nothing, only:

"The coffin will be here to-night, Walter. You'd better see about some
help." Then, turning to the children: "We're bringing him home."

Then she relapsed into the same mute looking into space, her hands
folded on her lap. Paul, looking at her, felt he could not breathe. The
house was dead silent.

"I went to work, mother," he said plaintively.

"Did you?" she answered, dully.

After half an hour Morel, troubled and bewildered, came in again.

"Wheer s'll we ha'e him when he DOES come?" he asked his wife.

"In the front-room."

"