d if they like it, let them; even
the women I don't pity so much, for if they did right they would take
broomsticks and drive the men to work; but the children, it's dreadful!"

"It is dreadful, Jack, and it makes me feel sick and ill when I go into
the infant-school. The clergyman's wife has opened a sort of
soup-kitchen, and a hundred children get a bowl of soup and a piece of
bread at dinner-time every day, and they sell soup under cost price to
the women. Mr. Brook has given fifty pounds towards it."

"Look here, sir," Jack said; "you know I've over fifty pounds laid
by--and money can't be better spent than for the children. The strike
can't last over a month, or six weeks at the outside, and maybe not
that. I'll give you three pounds a week, if you will kindly hand it over
to Mrs. Street, and say it's been sent you. But it's to go to feeding
children. Let me see; the soup don't cost above a penny a bowl, and say
a halfpenny for a hunch of bread. So that will give a good many of 'em a
dinner every day. Will you do that for me, sir?"

"I will, my boy," Mr. Merton said heartily. "You may save many a young
life."

"Well, sir, and what do you think of things?"

"I fear we shall have trouble, Jack. Last night there was rioting over
at Crawfurd; a manager's house was burnt down, and some policemen badly
hurt. There is angry talk all over the district, and I fear we shall
have it here."

When Jack started on Sunday evening for Birmingham, his last words to
his mother were:

"Mind, mother, the very first word you hear about violence or assault,
you post this envelope I have directed, to me. I will come straight
back. I'll keep father out of it somehow; and I'll do all I can to save
Mr. Brook's property. He's a good master, and he's been specially kind
to me, and I won't have him or his property injured."

"Why, lauk a' mercy, Jack, you ain't going to fight the whole place all
by yourself, are you?"

"I don't know what I am going to do yet," Jack said; "but you may be
quite sure I shall do something."

And as his mother looked at the set bull-dog expression of his mouth and
jaw, she felt that Jack was thoroughly in earnest.

CHAPTER X.

HARD TIMES.

It was when the pinch came, the subscriptions fell off, and the weekly
payments by the union dwindled to a few shillings for the support of a
whole family, that the rough virtues of the people of the mining
districts came strongly into prominence. Starvat