It would have been easy to go and look, but I felt that I could not, and I walked back to the gate and spoke to old Dunning.
“All the men come yet?” I said.
“No, Mester Jacob, they hevn’t all come yet,” he said.
I dare not ask any more. All had not come, and one of those who had not come was, of course, Stevens, and he was lying there dead.
I walked back with Dunning’s last words ringing in my ears.
“Ain’t you well, Mester Jacob?”
No, I was not well. I felt sick and miserable, and I would have given anything to have gone straight down the yard and seen the extent of the misery I had caused.
Oh! If I could have recalled the past, and undone everything; but that was impossible, and in a state of feverish anxiety I went upstairs to where the men were busy at lathe and dry grindstones, to try and get—a glimpse of my trap, as I hoped I could from one of the windows.
To my horror there were two men looking out, and I stopped dumb-foundered as I listened for their words, which I knew must be about the trapped man lying there.
“Nay, lad,” said one, “yow could buy better than they at pit’s mouth for eight shillings a chaldron.”