Mr. Sterling had always lived up to his moderate income, and though his salary was continued to the time of his death, the family then found themselves confronted by extreme poverty. They owned their little vine-covered cottage, at one end of the straggling village street, and in this Mrs. Sterling began to take boarders, with the hope of thus supporting her children. Her struggle was a hard one, and when one of the boarders, who was superintendent of the breaker, or "breaker boss," offered Derrick employment in his department, the boy was so anxious to help his mother that he gladly accepted the offer. Nothing else seemed open to him, and anything was better than idleness. So, after winning a reluctant consent from his mother, Derrick began to earn thirty-five cents a day, at that hardest and most monotonous of all forms of youthful labor, picking slate in a coal-breaker. He had been brought up and educated so differently from any of his companions of the chutes that the life was infinitely harder for him than for them. He hated dirt, and loved to be nice and clean, which nobody could be for a minute in the breaker. He also loved the sunlight, the fields, and the woods; but no sunshine ever penetrated the thick dust-clouds within these walls. In the summer-time it shone fierce and hot on the long sloping roof, just above the boys' heads, until the interior was like an oven, and in winter they were chilled by the cold winds that blew in through the ever-open windows. Here, and under these conditions, Derrick must work from seven o'clock in the morning until six in the evening. At noon the boys were allowed forty minutes in which to eat the luncheons brought in their little tin pails, and draw a few breaths of fresh air. During the first few weeks of this life there were times when it seemed to Derrick that he could not bear it any longer. More than once, as he sat beside the rattling chute, mechanically sorting the never-ending stream, with hands cut and bruised by the sharp slate, great tears rolled down his grimy cheeks. Over and over again had he been tempted to rush from the breaker, never to return to it; but each time he had seemed to see the patient face of his hard-working mother, or to feel the clinging arms of little Helen about his neck. He would remember how they were depending on his two dollars a week, and, instead of running away, would turn again to his work with a new energy, determined that, since he was to be a breaker boy, he would be the best in the colliery.