He mounted the hill. Three furnace-chimneys craned their thin necks to grime the sky with a dribbling, smoky breath; high on a bank of coal-dust, blurred silhouettes of trucks stood waiting in forlorn strings; women, limp, with unkempt hair, and loose, bedraggled skirts, stood round the doorways in gossiping groups. “Which is Mrs. Matheson’s?” he stopped to ask. “There--oop there, Mr. Burkett--by yon ash--where them childer’s standin’,” they answered, all speaking together, eagerly. “Look ye! that be Mrs. Matheson herself.” Alec went up to the woman. His face clouded a little, and the puffs from his pipe came briskly in rapid succession. “Mrs. Matheson, I’ve only just heard----Tell me, how did it happen?” he asked gently. She was a stout, red-faced woman, and her eyes were all bloodshot with much crying. She wiped them hastily with the corner of her apron before answering. “It was there, Mr. Burkett, by them rails. He was jest playin’ aboot in t’ road wi’ Arnison’s childer. At half-past one, t’ grandmoother stepped across to fetch me a jug o’ fresh water an’ she see’d him settin’ in door there. Then--mabbee twenty minutes later--t’ rain coome on an’ I thought to go to fetch him in. But I could’na see na sign of him anywhere. We looked oop and doon, and thought, mabbee, he’d toddled roond to t’ back. An’ then, all at once, Dan Arnison called to us that he was leein’ in t’ water, doon in beck-pool. An’ Dan ran straight doon, an’ carried him oop to me; but ’twas na use. He was quite cold and drownded. An’ I went----” But the sobs, rising thickly, swallowed the rest. Alec put his hand on her shoulder soothingly. “Ay, I know’d ye’d be grieved, Mr. Burkett. He was the bonniest boy in all t’ parish.” She lifted the apron to her eyes again, while he crossed to the railings. The wood of the posts was splintered and worm-eaten, and the lower rail was broken away. Below, the rock shelved down some fifteen feet to the beck-pool, black and oily-looking. “It’s a very dangerous place,” he said, half to himself. “Ay, Mr. Burkett, you’re right,” interrupted a bent and wizened old woman, tottering forward. “This be grandmoother, Mr. Burkett,” Mrs. Matheson explained. “’Twas grandmoother that see’d him last----”