Mr. Cattley was with his brother in the office, and John was left to stray about the outskirts of the place, after he had been shown over it, to wait for the curate. The grimy courts, the big, ugly buildings, sheds, all the frightful accessories of the place were new to him. Why were such places so ugly? Was it necessary they should be so ugly? The black soil of the yard, over which the workmen went crunching in their heavy boots, seemed mixed up of cinders and coal dust and mud. He was asking himself, with a half laugh at his own simplicity, why this must be--whether it might not be worth while to make the surroundings of the workshops less hideous--when his eye was caught by one of the labourers passing between him and the grimy wall. No skilled workman this, like those in the blackened moleskins, which, at the beginning of the week, were white, with their free step and independent aspect. The man was one of the drudges of the establishment, a skill-less hanger-on, doing jobs as they were wanted, carrying the great, rusty bars of iron, bringing coals, doing all the rough work of the place. He was dressed in the indescribable clothes of the British labourer, who has no sort of habitual costume, not even a blouse under which to hide his rags, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted about his neck. Perhaps it was this bit of cotton that caught John’s eyes: and then it seemed to him that the face above it was not unknown to him. It was a sufficiently villainous face; the features looked as if they had been roughly shaped out of some coarse paste, the small eyes, looking out from under shaggy brows, with a sidelong glance, the slouching gait, the unshaven chin, made up a very unattractive picture altogether. ‘Where can I have seen him?’ John said to himself. He had the keen recollection of youth, and soon identified the unlovely figure which had passed across his field of vision once, and no more. The man, seeing John’s gaze fixed on him, felt it expedient to touch his cap, and claim the recognition that was in the lad’s eyes. It might mean, if nothing more, a pint of beer. ‘Mornin’, sir,’ he said, as if he knew all about him. John was a little startled by this recognition. ‘You know me, too?’ he said. ‘I never forget anyone I ever sets eyes upon--especially a young man as has little to do with them sixpences of his, and knows as a poor man is mostly dry.’ ‘And yet I never saw you but once,’ said John, with a laugh. He thought within himself that this was not a very dignified acquaintance, and yet to have remembered was something in the fellow’s favour. ‘When I saw you you were looking for some one down at Edgeley, don’t you know?’