"Probably about four or five," was the reply.
"You know," continued Hamilton, in a conversational tone, "I should think it would be hard for a boy to start in working like that, and at night especially."
The man paused in his work an instant, and looked at the lad, passing his hand over his forehead as he did so.
"I was just ten years old when I began," he said. "I'm only thirty now. I look fifty, don't I?"
"You certainly look over thirty," Hamilton admitted.
"Oh, I look fifty all right, I know that, and I'm as nearly played out as a man of fifty. And it's all due to work when I was a youngster. Every year that a boy is put to hard physical work before he is sixteen is equal to five years taken off his life."
"I wonder that any employer does it, and that any State permits it," said Hamilton.
"There's not as much of it in Connecticut as in other States, although the figures show that it is growing here," was the reply. "But you talk as though you had been having a session with 'the crusader,'" the workman continued.
"Who's the crusader?" asked Hamilton.
"Haven't you seen him, then? With your ideas, you ought to get along well together. And," he added, more seriously, "'the crusader' will be heard of yet."