I could not cry out, or do anything but stare in horror, while the gaunt man, with some show of persuasion, began to strip the little body of its coat and vest and trousers--all its poor harness. Then, in a sickness beyond words, I comprehended. I was to be made exchange, for these foul vestments, my own pretty silken toilet. “Come along, Georgy,” wheedled his late master. “You wouldn’t be so unhandsome as to deny a lady, and she doing you honour to accept of them.” He rolled the body gently from side to side, so coaxingly forceful and intent, that someone, bursting in upon him at the moment, took him completely by surprise. It was a wretchedly clad woman, with resinous blots of eyes in a hungry face, and a little black moustache over a toothless mouth--strange contrast!--that was never more still than a crab’s. “So he’s dead, you dog!” she cried, seeming to feed on the words; “and you druv him to his death; and may God wither you!” The bent man jumped, like a vulture, from the body, and hopped and dodged, keeping it between him and the woman. “You took the odds!” he cried, coughing, and kneading his cracking knuckles together, “you took the odds, and you mustn’t cry out like a woman if they gone agen ye. I did no more’n my duty, as the Lord hears me!” “Both on us,” said the woman. “Well, speak out!” “He stuck,” said the sweep. “He stuck beyond reason. It were a good ten-inch square, for all it were a draw-in bend. I were forced to smoke him; but his lungs were that crowded, there was no loosening the pore critter till they bust and let him down. He were a good boy, and worth a deal to me.” “That’s true,” put in my master. “A man, though he _be_ a flue-faker, don’t cut off his nose to spite his face, missus.” She made no answer, staring fixedly at the corpse. “He were my seventh,” she said. “He made no cry when you come and took him away from me--a yellow-haired devil. Did he cry for his mammy, chokin’ up in the dark there?” “No,” said the man--“an unnat’ral son!” She threw up her hands with a frightful gesture. “I could have borne it if he had--I could have borne it, and cut my throat. What were you doing with him?” The sweep hesitated; but my master took the word from him. “It’s a question of his slops, missus.” (He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at me, where I stood in the background paralysed with terror.) “Half a bull or nothing, and you and him to share.” The woman put her arms akimbo. “Ho, indeed!” she said. “And where does _he_ come in?” “It’s my own smalls,” swore the man, excited and truculent at once. “I won’t bate an inch of ’em, if I’m to die for it.” They were facing each other across the body like tom cats, when my master pulled his friend aside, and whispered in his ear.