THE PUDDLER'S STORY.

THE irontrade's bad now, and there ain't work enough to keep half the furnaces going, as you may see by taking a walk about this neighbourhood and look at furnace arter furnace with the grass sprouting on the top 'stead o' the flame coming out nice and lively, and all as quiet as a berrin' ground 'stead o' the engines blowing and roaring, and the steam rushing out o' the safety-valves, as the old-fashioned engineers always kep' it-though now these new-fangled chaps say as it's wasteful, and for matter o' that actooaly wants to burn the smoke as comes out o' the top o' the furnaces, jest as if there was any sense in that. Why only the other day some doctor comes round here-jest as if a doctor knowed anything about iron—and you should have heer'd him talk! Such stuff as I've never heer'd afore, and I've been at these 'ere ironworks, man and boy, a matter of five-and-forty year. What I says is, they get readin' their books too much and tryin' to find out that as it stands to sense, no one ought to know. All these doctors and schoolmasters and chaps as comes swarming round trying their 'speriments, and talking about "chemistry" and all that there, it's them as has ruined the iron trade in this country. Here they be come and built a Board School right on the other side o' the pit mount, and the bell ding-dongs, ding-dongs enough to drive you mad, and here are these works standing idle, and moss growing amongst the machinery.

Why when I was a lad, bless you, these 'ere works, they was on night and day, and as for chemistry as they calls it, it was kep' to it's right place, namely, Mr. Jones's shop in the market place with the red and green bottles, and he used to sell good stuff, as if you took some of it on Saturday night, you'd have to stop in all day o' Sunday, and made you feel as weak as a kitten, and that showed the strength on it-but now they has their 'pathic physic-little grains like grains o' sand, and

pills is'nt what they was, blessed if I don't have to take seven at once to do me any good. It's all the same all throughout-Board Schools, eddication, free libarys, and tinned meat, and all the good old-fashioned things has gone out-good trade among 'em. Why I've seen the time when I was getting my five quid * a week at the puddling, and we could afford to have our roast duck and green peas brought into the forge for us dinners, and now here I am just living in this 'ere gate keeper's house a watching to see that this 'ere deserted old ironworks don't run away. "Many of us at work here?" I should think so. We used to reckon there was three hundred and fifty employed in these works, and the master one of the good old-fashioned sort, and had his beefsteak and bottle of champagne in the office of a morning at eleven o'clock, and kep' his four hunters in the season, and spent his money like a lord. He didn't go poking round seeing if he could bottle up smoke and use it over again, nor he didn't have a doctor's shop in the office, with bottles and pestle and mortars, and such--more like he had a good cupboard with some fine old port and sherry in it as he could give a customer if he happened to come round. What I say is, Providence is agen 'em. They say these here scientific chaps don't believe in ne'er a God, and thinks they can work things out theirselves, thinks they understands the top and bottom of everything, but they don't, and it stands to reason that Providence 'ill be agen 'em. Everybody knows that the iron trade's gone to the dogs since they began to take the sway. Why, bless you, sir, I've seen things as not the wisest chap as ever lived could understand, as shows me we ain't intended to go poking and probing into things, and if you do go probing and poking you can do no good; it puts me in mind o' when these works were all in full go and I used to come on the night turn every other week. There seemed to come such a queer kind o' quiet about three o'clock i' the morning. Here was the works all going at it hammer and tongs, and the furnaces as bright as day, and yet it seemed that the quiet and the dark o' the mountains closed in upon us, and every now and then there'd come a sighing wind as 'ud make you feel there was summat ghostly about it, and that I've often seen Irish Mike-that was a chap as worked here then-cross himself, though he dain't know I was looking at him. There's summat about the dark you can't understand, and there's summat about everything you can't understand, and you ain't meant to, neither; and since these here chaps have been going round trying to show that you can understand everything, why everything's gone wrong.

"What queer things have I seen?" Why some queer 'uns I can tell you. That was one o' the rummest as took place close on Christmas eight and twenty years ago come the Tuesday afore next Christmas Day. We'll just walk into the forge, though I can't abear to go into it by myself and see the grass growing between the iron flooring plates, and the grease on the wheels all gone to mouldiness, and the daylight looking through the roof in many a place like the holes in a beggar's ragged shirt. Well, here's the furnace I used to work, and here's my tools, which is growing rusty,

* Pounds.

though I've kep' 'em oiled. Its twenty year since there was a bit o' fire in this 'ere furnace; the best furnace it was in the place, and 'ud turn out more stuff, as my missis used to say it was "through not fettling o' Sundays." The other chaps used to have their'n fettled on Sundays in the regular way, and got ready for Monday morning, but me going with her to the Wesleyan Chapel, her says "Bill," her says, "I don't care how early you get up on the Monday mornin', but don't go doing any manner o' work on the holy day." So I used to go to bed directly I got home from chapel, and at twelve o'clock I'd come and fettle my furnace ready for Monday, and if you'll believe me, when some o' the other chaps was plagued to death with theirn-bricks coming loose, and the arch fallin' in, and all manner-mine 'ud go on as regular as regular, and never lose me a minute, so I could stand their laughter. What put me in mind o' that was, it being on a Sunday night-leastways it was on the Monday mornin' about two o'clock as I first saw him I'm going to tell you about. It used to be awfully quiet in this mill, as you may think, and I often felt nervous like, for this place standing, as you see, in the middle of the mountains, and two mile from the village, and me being alone, with jest a candle stuck here and there to light me, it ain't to be wondered at as I sometimes felt skeered. I was round here at the back mending the arch of the fire, and all in a minute I knowed as there was some one else about, and I looked up and there was a young feller about eighteen years of age, as good looking a young feller as ever you see. He was dressed in workman's clothes but I seed in a minute he was no working man's son. He had on a blue check shirt and a pair o' moleskin trousers, new 'uns, and a rough blue jacket, such as they sell in the shop in the Market Place; but, lor bless you, there was that about his face as didn't fit his clothes at all, and his hands was as white and tender as a lady's. He had light curly hair, and his eyes were quick and lively, and he had a sharp way of speaking-rather masterful, I should call it.

"Good morning," he says.

"Good morning," I says. "It's an early one, and a surprising thing,' I says, "to see anybody but me about."

"I heard trade was good at these ironworks, and that you were setting young fellows on; I came to see if I could get a job of work," he says. "Excuse me, Sir," I says, "but two o'clock on Sunday night-howsumdever Monday mornin's a queerish time to come looking for work, and you don't seem hardly the make for a puddler's underhand," I says. "I don't care what I do. Anything," he says. "And as for this being a queer time to come, I was going to Swannington, twenty miles further on, only I saw the light and thought I'd come in and try here." "And where might you ha' come from?" says I.

"Well, I don't know that that's anything to you, my good fellow," he says, looking as high and haughty as a dook.

"Well, as to that," I says, "the case is this. You come here and ask me for a job o' work. It is but nateral as I should ask you who you are and where you come from."

Yes," he says, and meditates a bit, and bites his lips and frowns. At last he says "You seem to be a straightforward kind of man—you will not betray me?"

"Well, sir," I says, "I don't know what you are aiming at. You drops down here i' the middle o' the night, and I don't know you from Adam," I says, "but as for betraying you, I ain't going to betray you. I never puck out Judas Iscariot as my favourite disciple, and I ain't agoin' to begin now," I says.

"Give me your hand," he says.

"It's rather a dirty 'un," I says, "but it's honest." He shakes hands, and then he says "I'm come here to get out of the way of a tyrant," he says. "Better a life of free work than a life of slavery, and if you can give me work so that I can get my bread, I shall be satisfied. My name is Thomas Mainwaring; my father is dead, and I'm sorry to say that my mother is married again to a villain, whom I should have killed if I had stopped, or he should have killed me."

"And what may his name be," I says.

Levett," he says.

"Not Richard Levett?" I says.

"Richard Levett is his name," he says, looking at me rather surprised. I drops my trowel that I was working with and stands up kind o' giddy-like, and holds on to the furnace, for I felt as if I should tumble down. You'll hear why, when I come to it. When I come to myself a bit, I takes the young fellow's hand, and I told him that if he was agen Richard Levett I was with him, for I was agen him too, and would be to the last, so there was my hand on it. "My missis might say what she liked," I says, "about forgiving your enemies and all that, but there were some enemies as even the Lord himself wouldn't ha' forgiven, and this Richard Levett was one o' them."

"I know him," I says. "Tall, rather fine looking." "Well I don't know about fine looking," says young Mainwaring. "I should call him sly and mean-looking."

"Well," I says, "perhaps so. Black hair?"

"It's going grey now," he says.

"Ah! It's fourteen year, since I seen him. It would be going grey A heavy moustache?

now.

"No, he shaves."

I'd

"Wants to look as different as he can, the miserable scoundrel. break his bones with this 'ere rabbling iron," I says, "as soon as look at him."

Well, I asked the young fellow how far he had come like, I didn't want to put him through his catechism too much at first, and found he had come from Gloucestershire, and had been walking two days. He had bought the clothes he wore at a neighbouring town, and had left his others at an inn. He was more fit for bed than work, so I took him to the loft over the stables and found him a nice heap o' straw to sleep on, and I went to look at him in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour and he was asleep as calm as a baby.