The murmur of ironical assent which went round the room showed that Murdoch had expressed the sense of the meeting. He had been rising in importance daily, ever since the announcement of the mill's closing. He had always been the prophet of calamity, and now that his worst prophecies had been more than fulfilled he was looked upon as little less than inspired.
'Well,' said Bolt deprecatingly, 'who could ha' foreseen things turning out i' this way? And as for asking them to drink their healths, why they ain't their masters now. So where's the use?'
'It do seem hard, it do,' murmured Sigley, who went to chapel regularly, 'when a man have saved up a bit to have it all swept away in a rushing, mighty wind, and us left, like Pharaoh's lean kine, to make bricks without straw. The whole creation groaneth!...'
'Well, don't groan here,' interrupted Murdoch grimly; 'tha'd best do tha groanin' wi' the rest o' creation at t' chapel; and well mayst tha groan there if tha hears tell o' cows makin' bricks.'
'Them as don't believe in the Bible,' said Sigley impressively, giving voice to a very popular belief, 'can't look for a blessing.'
'Nor yet them as does, it seems.'
'What ah was going to say was this—as we should take comfort, thinking as we ain't the only ones.'
'Comfort, tha loon!—that's the hell of it! Damn the man, says I, as can find comfort i' t' thought o' other men's misery!'
It was Hatfield who spoke, and as he spoke he brought his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses ring.
'How tha does take on, John,' said Bolt. 'What Sigley meant was only as it shows you ain't to blame, seeing as so many others is in the same fix.'