"And I know who _that_ is," said Burrows, with a sneer. "Well, I can tell you what the rest of the men in that place think, and it's this: that the man in that village who _doesn't_ drink is a mean skunk, who's betraying his own flesh and blood to the capitalists! Oh! you may preach at us till you're black in the face, but drink we _shall_ till we get the control of our own labour. For, look here! Directly we cease to drink--directly we become good boys on your precious terms--the standard of life falls, down come wages, and _you_ sweep off our beer-money to spend on your champagne. Thank you, Sir George! but we're not such fools as we look--and that don't suit us! Good-day to you." And he haughtily touched his hat in response to George's movement, and walked quickly away. * * * * * George slowly mounted his own hill. The chequered April day was declining, and the dipping sun was flooding the western plain with quiet light. Rooks were circling round the hill, filling the air with long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents--scents of leaf and grass, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle and thud of the pits. George stood still a moment under a ragged group of Scotch firs--one of the few things at Ferth that he loved--and gazed across the Cheshire border to the distant lines of Welsh hills. The excitement of his talk with Burrows was subsiding, leaving behind it the obstinate resolve of the natural man. He should tell his uncles there was nothing for it but to fight it out. Some blood must be let; somebody must be master. What poor limited fools, after all, were the best of the working men--how incapable of working out any serious problem, of looking beyond their own noses and the next meal! Was he to spend his life in chronic battle with them--a set of semi-civilised barbarians--his countrymen in nothing but the name? And for what cause--to what cry? That he might defend against the toilers of this wide valley a certain elegant house in Brook Street, and find the means to go on paying his mother's debts?--such debts as he carried the evidence of, at that moment, in his pocket. Suddenly there swept over his mind with pricking force the thought of Mary Batchelor at her door, blind with weeping and pain--of the poor boy, dead in his prime. Did those two figures stand for the _realities_ at the base of things--the common labours, affections, agonies, which uphold the world?