Afterward when the two accidentally came in contact, Haworth wasted few civil words. At times his domineering brusqueness excited Murdoch to wonder. "He's a queer fellow, that Haworth," he said reflectingly to Floxham. "Sometimes I think he's out of humor with me." With the twelve-year-old daughter of one of the workmen, who used to bring her father's dinner, the young fellow had struck up something of a friendship. She was the eldest of twelve, a mature young person, whose business-like air had attracted him. She had assisted her mother in the rearing of her family from her third year, and had apparently done with the follies of youth. She was stunted with much nursing and her small face had a shrewd and careworn look. Murdoch's first advances she received with some distrust, but after a lapse of time they progressed fairly and, without any weak sentiment, were upon excellent terms. One rainy day she came into the yard enveloped in a large shawl, evidently her mother's, and also evidently very much in her way. Her dinner-can, her beer-jug, and her shawl were more than she could manage. "Eh! I _am_ in a mess," she said to Hilary, stopping at the door-way with a long-drawn breath. "I dunnot know which way to turn--what wi' th' beer and what wi' th' dinner. I've getten on mother's Sunday shawl as she had afore she wur wed, an' th' eends keep a-draggin' an' a-draggin', an' th' mud'll be th' ruin on em. Th' pin mother put in is na big enow, an' it's getten loose." There was perhaps not much sense of humor in the young man. He did not seem to see the grotesqueness of the little figure with its mud-bedraggled maternal wrappings. He turned up the lapel of his coat and examined it quite seriously. "I've got a pin here that will hold it," he said. "I picked it up because it was such a large one." Janey Briarley's eyes brightened. "Eh!" she ejaculated, "that theer's a graidely big un. Some woman mun ha' dropped it out o' her shawl. Wheer did tha foind it?" "In the street." "I thowt so. Some woman's lost it. Dost tha think tha con pin it reet, or mun I put th' beer down an' do it mysen?" He thought he could do it and bent down to reach her level. It was at this moment that Haworth approached the door with the intention of passing out. Things had gone wrong with him, and he was in one of his worst moods. He strode down the passage in a savage hurry, and, finding his way barred, made no effort to keep his temper. "Get out of the road," he said, and pushed Murdoch aside slightly with his foot. It was as if he had dropped a spark of fire into gunpowder. Murdoch sprang to his feet, white with wrath and quivering. "D----n you!" he shrieked. "D----n you! I'll kill you!" and he rushed upon him. As he sprang upon him, Haworth staggered between the shock and his amazement. A sense of the true nature of the thing he had done broke in upon him.