"You were always generous, Master Johnny. Even when a baby----" "Never mind that. It is not I who am generous now. The silver was given me for you by some one else; I am cleared out, myself. Where's Dicky?" "He's upstairs in his bed, sir: too stiff to move. Mr. Cole, too, said he might as well lie there to-day. Would you like to go up and see him?" As I ran up the staircase, open from the room, a vision of her wan face followed me--of the catching sob again--of the smooth brown hair which she was pressing from her temples. We have heard of a peck of troubles: she seemed to have a bushel of them. Dicky was a sight, as far as variety of colours went. There was no mistake about his stiffness. "It won't last long, Dick; and then you'll be as well as ever." Dick's grey eyes--they were just like his mother's--looked up at mine. I thought he was going to cry. "There. You will never take anything again, will you?" Dick shook his head as emphatically as his starched condition allowed. "Father says as he'd kill me the next time if I did." "When did he say that?" "This morning; afore he went out." Dicky's room had a lean-to roof, and was about the size of our jam closet at Crabb Cot. Not an earthly article was in it but the mattress he was lying on. "Who sleeps here besides you, Dicky?" "Jacky and little Sam. 'Liza and Jessy sleeps by father and mother." "Well, good day, Dicky." Whom should I come upon at the end of Crabb Lane, but the Squire and Hoar. The Squire had his gun in his hand and was talking his face red: Hoar leaned against the wooden palings that skirted old Massock's garden, and looked as sullen as he had looked yesterday. I thought the Pater had been blowing him up for beating the boy; but it seemed that he was blowing him up for the strike. Cole, the surgeon, hurrying along on his rounds, stopped just as I did. "Not your fault, Hoar!" cried the Squire. "Of course I know it's not your fault alone, but you are as bad as the rest. Come; tell me what good the strike has done for you." "Not much as yet," readily acknowledged Hoar, in a tone of incipient defiance. "To me it seems nothing less than a crime to throw yourself out of work. There's the work ready to your hands, _spoiling_ for want of being done--and yet you won't do it!" "I do but obey orders," said Hoar: who seemed to be miserable enough, in spite of the incipient defiance. "But is there any sense in it?" reasoned the Squire. "If you men could drop the work and still keep up your homes and, their bread-and-cheese, and their other comforts, I'd say nothing. But look at your poor suffering wives and children. I should be _ashamed_ to be idle, when my idleness bore such consequences." The man answered nothing. Cole put in his word.