“I tell you, man, as I rushed in, they were all three there. How they came there together I do not know. I do not want to know. All I know is that it has pleased God to spare us from a sin for which we should never have forgiven ourselves.”
“I don’t see as yow had much to do wi’ it, parson,” said a voice, sneeringly.
“My men, my men,” cried the vicar, in a deeply moved voice, “do you think I live here among you without feeling that your joys and sorrows are mine? and your sins are mine as well, for I ought to have taught you better. For God’s sake let us have no more of these wretched meetings; break up your society, and act as man to man. Suffer and be strong. Have forbearance, and try to end these dreadful strikes, which fall not on you, but on your wives and children.”
“But what call hev you got to interfere?” cried a surly voice.
“Howd hard theer,” cried Stockton; “parson’s i’ the raight. He’s spent three hundred pound, if he’s spent a penny, over them as was ’most pined to dead.”
“That’s raight,” cried several voices.
“Never mind that, my men; it was my duty, even as it is to be the friend and brother of all who are here. But listen—”
“I didn’t come to hear parson preach,” cried a voice,
“One word—listen to me for your own sakes,” cried the vicar, in impassioned tones. “Suppose you had succeeded without the horrible loss of life that must have occurred through your ignorance of the force of powder—suppose the works had been, with all the costly machinery, turned into a heap of ruins?”
“It would hev sarved Richard Glaire well raight,” said some one.