me. Yo' need na care, Mester, I'm used to it.”
“But I cannot go away and leave you here,” he said.
“You canna do no other,” she answered.
“Have you no friends?” he ventured hesitatingly.
“No, I ha' not,” she said, hardening again, and she turned away as if she meant to end the discussion. But he would not leave her. The spirit of determination was as strong in his character as in her own. He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and, writing a few lines upon it, handed it to her. “If you will take that to Thwates' wife,” he said, “there will be no necessity for your remaining out of doors all night.”
She took it from him mechanically; but when he finished speaking, her calmness left her. Her hand began to tremble, and then her whole frame, and the next instant the note fell to the ground, and she dropped into her old place again, sobbing passionately and hiding her face on her arms.
“I wunnot tak' it!” she cried. “I wunnot go no wheer an' tell as I'm turned loike a dog into th' street.”
Her misery and shame shook her like a tempest. But she subdued herself at last.
“I dunnot see as yo' need care,” she protested half resentfully. “Other folk dunnot. I'm left to mysen most o' toimes.” Her head fell again and she trembled from head to foot.
“But I do care!” he returned. “I cannot leave you here and will not. If you will trust me and do as I tell you, the people you go to need know nothing you do not choose to tell them.”
It was evident that his determination made her falter, and seeing this he followed up his advantage and so far improved it that at last, after a few more arguments, she rose slowly and picked up the fallen paper.
“If I mun go, I mun,” she said, twisting it nervously in her fingers, and then there was a pause, in which she plainly lingered to say something, for she stood before him with a restrained air and downcast face. She broke the silence herself, however, suddenly looking up and fixing her large eyes full upon him.
“If I was a lady,” she said, “happen I should know what to say to yo'; but bein' what I am, I dunnot. Happen as yo're a gentleman yo' know what I'd loike to say an' canna—happen yo' do.”
Even as she spoke, the instinct of defiance in her nature struggled against that of gratitude; but the finer instinct conquered.
“We will not speak of thanks,” he said. “I may need help some day, and come to you for it.”
“If yo' ivver need help at th' pit will yo' come to me?” she demanded. “I've seen th' toime as I could ha' gi'en help to th' Mesters ef I'd had th' moind. If yo'll promise that——”
“I will promise it,” he answered her.
“An' I'll promise to gi' it yo',” eagerly. “So that's settled. Now I'll go my ways. Good neet to yo'.”
“Good night,” he returned, and uncovering with as grave a courtesy as he might have shown to the finest lady in the land, or to his own mother or sister, he stood at the road-side and watched her until she was out of sight.
CHAPTER II. - “Liz”
“Th' owd lad's been at his tricks again,” was the rough comment made on Joan Lowrie's appearance when she came down to her work the next morning; but Joan looked neither right nor left, and went to her place without a word. Not one among them had ever heard her speak of her miseries and wrongs, or had known her to do otherwise than ignore the fact that their existence was well known among her fellow-workers.
When Derrick passed her on his way to his duties, she looked up from her task with a faint, quick color, and replied to his courteous gesture with a curt yet not ungracious nod. It was evident that not even her gratitude would lead her to encourage any advances. But, notwithstanding this, he did not feel repelled or disappointed. He had learned enough of Joan, in their brief interview, to prepare him to expect no other manner from her. He was none the less interested in the girl because he found himself forced to regard her curiously and critically, and at a distance.
He watched her as she went about her work, silent, self-contained and solitary.
“That lass o' Lowrie's!” said a superannuated old collier once, in answer to a remark of Derrick's. “Eh! hoo's a rare un, hoo is! Th' fellys is haaf feart on her. Tha' sees hoo's getten a bit o' skoolin'. Hoo con read a bit, if tha'll believe it, Mester,” with a touch of pride.
“Not as th' owd chap ivver did owt fur her i' that road,” the speaker went on, nothing loath to gossip with 'one o' th' Mesters.' “He nivver did nowt fur her but spend her wage i' drink. But theer wur a neet skoo' here a few years sen', an' th' lass went her ways wi' a few o' th' steady uns, an' they say as she getten ahead on 'em aw, so as it wur a wonder. Just let her set her mind to do owt an' she'll do it.”
“Here,” said Derrick to Paul that night, as the engineer leaned back in his easy chair, glowering at the grate and knitting his brows, “Here,” he said, “is a creature with the majesty of a Juno—though really nothing but a girl in years—who rules a set of savages by the mere power of a superior will and mind, and yet a woman who works at the mouth of a coal-pit—who cannot write her own name, and who is beaten by her fiend of a father as if she were a dog. Good Heaven! what is she doing here? What does it all mean?”
The Reverend Paul put up his delicate hand deprecatingly.
“My dear Fergus,” he said, “if I dare—if my own life and the lives of others would let me—I think I should be tempted to give it up, as one gives up other puzzles, when one is beaten by them.”
Derrick looked at him, forgetting himself in a sudden sympathetic comprehension.
“You have been more than ordinarily discouraged to-day,” he said. “What is it, Grace?”
“Do you know Sammy Craddock?” was the reply.
“'Owd Sammy Craddock'?” said Derrick with a laugh. “Wasn't it 'Owd Sammy,' who was talking to me to-day about Joan Lowrie?”
“I dare say it was,” sighing. “And if you know Sammy Craddock, you know one of the principal causes of my discouragement. I went to see him this afternoon, and I have not quite—quite got over it, in fact.”
Derrick's interest in his friend's trials was stirred as usual at the first signal of distress. It was the part of his stronger and more evenly balanced nature to be constantly ready with generous sympathy and comfort.
“It has struck me,” he said, “that Craddock is one of the institutions of Riggan. I should like to hear something definite concerning him. Why is he your principal cause of discouragement, in the first place?”
“Because he is the man of all others whom it is hard for me to deal with—because he is the shrewdest, the most irreverent and the most disputatious old fellow in Riggan. And yet, in the face of all this, because he is so often right, I am forced into a sort of respect for him.”
“Right!” repeated Derrick, raising his eyebrows. “That's bad.”
Grace rose from the chair, flushing up to the roots of his hair—
“Right!” he reiterated. “Yes, right I say. And how, I ask you, can a man battle against the faintest element of right and truth, even when it will and must arraign itself on the side of wrong? If I could shut my eyes to the right, and see only the wrong, I might leave myself at least a blind content, but I cannot—I cannot. If I could look upon these things as Barholm does——” But here he stopped, suddenly checking himself.
“Thank God you cannot,” put