“Yo’ all know me, and what I can do, and do you think I’m going to let a bit of a boy, wi’ his pretence about his larning and studies, bunch me and ca’ me a fool and a brute when I know more about t’mine wi’ one o’ my hands than he does wi’ his whole body.”
Still there was no reply, the men taking up their picks and looking uneasily at the speaker.
“Tell ’ee what. I’m a man, I am, and a man o’ my word. I said I’d put my mark on him for this job; and I will. Yo’ all hear me, don’t ’ee? I say I’ll put my mark upon him.”
The big miner, with his fierce blackened face and rolling eyes, looked vindictive enough then to be guilty of any atrocity as he seemed to be seeking for an answer.
“Yo’ hear me? I say I’ll put my mark upon him.”
“Not thou, lad,” said one of his companions at last.
“I tell ’ee I will. Never mind when or wheer. And now wheer’s the man as’ll go and tell him what I say?”
No one spoke, and soon after that was heard the regular metallic chip—chip—chip of the picks in the black wall of coal, Ebenezer Parks muttering to himself the while, and thinking of how he could best revenge himself upon “that boy.”