had sworn to put ten thousand stones on
those ledges before he died, or perish in the attempt. Hence Edwin
sometimes called him "Old Perish-in-the-attempt." A little farther on
the open gates of a manufactory disclosed six men playing the noble game
of rinkers on a smooth patch of ground near the weighing machine. These
six men were Messieurs Ford, Carter, and Udall, the three partners
owning the works, and three of their employees. They were celebrated
marble-players, and the boys stayed to watch them as, bending with one
knee almost touching the earth, they shot the rinkers from their stubby
thumbs with a canon-like force and precision that no boy could ever hope
to equal. "By gum!" mumbled Edwin involuntarily, when an impossible
shot was accomplished; and the bearded shooter, pleased by this tribute
from youth, twisted his white apron into a still narrower ring round his
waist. Yet Edwin was not thinking about the game. He was thinking
about a battle that lay before him, and how he would be weakened in the
fight by the fact that in the last school examination, Charlie Orgreave,
younger than himself by a year, had ousted him from the second place in
the school. The report in his pocket said: "Position in class next
term: third;" whereas he had been second since the beginning of the
year. There would of course be no "next term" for him, but the report
remained. A youth who has come to grips with that powerful enemy, his
father, cannot afford to be handicapped by even such a trifle as a
report entirely irrelevant to the struggle.

Suddenly Charlie Orgreave gave a curt nod, and departed, in nonchalant
good-humour, doubtless considering that to accompany his chum any
farther would be to be guilty of girlish sentimentality. And Edwin
nodded with equal curtness and made off slowly into the maze of Bursley.
The thought in his heart was: "I'm on my own, now. I've got to face it
now, by myself." And he felt that not merely his father, but the
leagued universe, was against him.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TWO.

THE FLAME.

The various agencies which society has placed at the disposal of a
parent had been at work on Edwin in one way or another for at least a
decade, in order to equip him for just this very day when he should step
into the world. The moment must therefore be regarded as dramatic, the
first crucial moment of an experiment long and elaborately prepared.
Knowledge was admittedly the armour and the we