The womenkind of the colliers are marked by the life of the pits no less than the men. They are rough, capable housewives, dressing with more care for durability than effect, tolerant of their menfolks’ weaknesses, and, above all, stamped with the pit-side stoicism apt to be mistaken for callousness. The sudden death of their breadwinner is an everyday hazard, accepted without complaint and without concealment as part of their life. Like their husbands, they exist from hand to mouth on the brink of eternity. Thrift, when any day’s work may be your last, seems a misplaced virtue. Lean fare approaches as pay day recedes, and illness, meagrely provided for by membership of a “sick” society, is tided over in the main by the unfailing generosity of neighbours whose own table suffers by the charity. SCENE The scene represents the living room of a collier’s cottage in Lanarkshire. The room has three doors, one to the right and one to the left, which lead to the sleeping rooms, and one in the centre which opens on to the village street. A fireplace with a cooking stove set in it is at the right. A holland blind is drawn down at the window, but it does not completely shut out the night, which is now dissolving into a grey, cold dawn, for the cheap German alarm clock that ticks loudly on the mantleshelf marks the hour five-thirty. When the curtain rises the room is in darkness save for the glint of bluish-grey light that shows at the window. Then Mary Brown enters from the door on the right, she strikes a match and lights a lamp, when you see she is a girl of about twenty; she does not look her best, her hair has been hurriedly screwed up, her print blouse, murky with toil, has not yet been fastened, she wears a draggle- tailed skirt of sombre colour and list slippers are on her feet. A small spirit-lamp is on the hob and a little tin kettle near by; she lights the lamp, puts the kettle on it, then crosses to the door on the left and knocks. MARY Are ye up, Jock? JOCK (within) Aw richt, A’ll be there in a meenit.