ds. He would
return home between four and five, mud-stained from head to foot,
triumphant at heart, but with an amusingly cowed expression on his face,
as of a dog that expects a whipping.

The only whipping that Mary Hesketh could administer to her repentant
Job was that of the tongue. In her early matrimonial life she had
wielded this like a flail, and Job had winced before the blows which she
delivered. But in course of time she had come to realise that her
husband's passion for the chase was incurable, and, like a wise woman,
she accepted it as part of her destiny. "Thou's bin laikin' agean, thou
gert good-for-nowt," was her usual greeting for Job on these occasions.

"Ay, ay, lass," he would reply; "I've addled nowt all t' day. But thou
promised, when we wed, to tak me for better or worse; an' if t' worse
wasn't t' hounds, it would happen be hosses or drink. Sithee, Mally,
I've browt thee a two-three snowdrops; thou can wear 'em o' Sunday."

Such was the Job Hesketh that I had known and loved for many years, and
I saw no reason why his genial temper and buoyant heart should not
remain with him to the end of his life. Yet within six months the man
changed completely. He grew suddenly old and shrunken; the great blithe
laugh that pealed through the house was silenced, the look of suave
contentment with himself and with the world about him vanished from his
face, and in its place I saw a nervous, troubled glance as of one who
suspects a lurking foe ready to spring at his throat. The change which
came over Job was like that which sometimes comes over a city sky in
autumn. The morning breaks fair, and the sun rises from out a cloudless,
frosty sky, promising a day of sunshine. But then, with the lighting of
a hundred thousand fires, a change takes place. The smoke cannot escape
in the windless air, but hangs like a pall over the houses. The sun
grows chill, coppery and rayless, and soon a fog, creeping along the
river, silently encloses each particle of smoke within a watery shroud,
and a mantle of murky gloom invests the city.

What was it that wrought this sudden change in the mind of Job Hesketh?
The story is soon told. For a long time there had been no serious
accident at the Leeds Steel Works, and the workmen, almost without being
aware of it, had grown somewhat reckless of the dangers which they had
to face. They knew quite well that in many of the operations which the
metal undergoes in its passage from crude