It was about a month later, over another job, that Fullerton ventured another advance, and this time he said, as he was leaving the workshop, and holding out his hand-- "Good-bye, Morrison. Oh, by the way, we've got Samuel Mumbey, D.D., at the chapel on Sunday. Preaches twice. We'll find you good seats if you and Mrs Morrison will come. Ours is a nice woshup, Morrison, a very nice woshup, as you would say if you was to try." "Thankye, sir," said Tom Morrison, stolidly, and again Fullerton said no more till he was some distance away, when he rubbed his hands softly and smiled a satisfied smile, saying to himself-- "I should like to save Tom Morrison and his wife from the pit." Tom Morrison was hard at work, thinking sometimes of his pretty little wife in the cottage, and how thin and careworn she had grown of late. He wondered whether it was his fault, and because he had been so hard and cold since he had lost his little child and quarrelled with the Rector; whether, too, he ought not to try and bring back some of the brightness to her face, when it seemed as if so much light as usual did not shine in upon his work. He raised his head, and found that there were a pair of thick arms leaning on the window-sill, and a great bearded face resting upon them, the owner's eyes staring hard at him. "Hallo, Jock!" he said, quietly. "What, Tommy!" was the deep-toned reply; and then there was a pause, as Tom Morrison felt angry as he thought of his brothers ne'er-do-well life, and then of his having been hard and cold of late, and this seemed the time for beginning in another line. "Long time since I've seen you, Jock," he said, quietly. "Ay, 'tis, Tommy. Working hard as usual." "Ay, working hard, Jock," said Tom, resting his spoke-shave. "Thou used to be a good workman, Jock. Why not take to it again?" "Me? Work? Wheer?" "I'll give you plenty to do, Jock, and find wage for it, lad, if thou'lt drop being a shack and sattle down." Jock Morrison laughed in a deep and silent manner. "Nay, lad, nay," he said at last. "Thankye kindly, Tom, all the same. What's the good o' working?" "To be respectable and save money." "I don't want to be respectable. I don't want to save money, lad. There's plenty do that wi'out me." "But how will it be when thou grows old and sick, lad?" "Why then, Tommy, I shall die; just the same as you will. I'm happy my way, lad. Thou'rt happy thy way. Folk say I'm a shack, and a blackguard, and a poacher. Well, let 'em; I don't keer." "Nay, don't say that, lad," said Tom Morrison; "I don't like it. I'd like to see thee tak' to work and be a man." "Ha, ha, ha, Tom! Why, I'm a bigger and a stronger man than thou art anyways. Nay, I don't keer for work. Let them do it as likes. I don't want boxing up in a house or a shed. I want to be in the free air, and to come and go as I like. I see no good in your ways. Let me bide." Tom looked at him in a dull, careworn way.