"And about Wednesday in the third week," he went on, "he come to the master, and he says--Isaac was older than me, and his chest it would be beginning to trouble him pretty bad, so he says: 'I'm done,' he says; 'I must go home. You can get another chap to do my bastes to-night--will you?' And the master says to Isaac: 'If you don't do your bastes overtime, if you're too high and mighty,' he says, 'why, there's plenty as will, and you don't need to come to-morrow neither.' And Isaac had his wife Judith at home, and four little uns; and he stopped and done his bastes, of _course_. And next night he couldn't well see, and he'd been dreadful sick all day, and he says to the master again, he says as he must go home. And the master, he says the same to him--and Isaac stops. And on Friday afternoon he come home. And the shop had been steamin hot, but outside it was a wind to cut yer through. And his wife Judith says to him, 'Isaac, you look starved!' and she set him by the fire. And he sat by the fire, and he didn't say nothing. Then his hands fell down sudden like that--" The old man let his hands drop heavily by his side with a simple dramatic gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning brown necks forward. "And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says 'not for nothing and nobody. For if it was the trump of the Most High,' he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before mornin.--And his master gave Judith five shillings towards the coffin, and the men in the shop, they raised the rest." The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind, his eyes blinking painfully under the gas. "Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing else. Why!"--his hoarse voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces. It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is. I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say how they served Isaac."