CHAPTER XI
THE STRIKE
A week had passed, and Geordie Sinclair and his boy, or at least all that could be gathered up of them, had been laid to rest.
Nellie was very ill, and was now in bed. The reaction had been too much for her. But, as Jenny Maitland had said: "She's never cried yet, an' it would hae been better gin she had. She jist looked at ye wi' her big black e'en sae vexed-like and faraway lookin', an' never spoke hardly. When they carried out the coffins, she sprang up gin she wad follow them, but was putten back to bed again. It was heart-vexin' to look at her."
Robert suffered, too. The sympathy of everyone went out to him. At night when he went to bed the whole scene was reënacted before him in all its horror. Those tense moments of tragedy had so powerfully impressed his boyish mind that he could never forget them.
At the end of the week Andrew Marshall visited them to talk over matters. A collection had been made at the pay-office by the men employed at the pit, and a beautiful wreath purchased and placed upon the grave. A substantial balance had been handed over to Mrs. Sinclair, and this defrayed the expenses of the funeral. After Andrew had spoken of various things, he broke on to the object of his errand that night.
"I hae been thinkin', Nellie," he began nervously, "that I could tak' Rob in wi' me. Ye see, I ha'e no callans o' my ain, and I ha'e aye to get yin to draw off me. So, gin ye're agreeable, I could tak' Rob, an' I'll be guid to him. He can come an' be my neighbor, an' as he'll hae to get work in ony case, he micht as weel work wi' me as wi' ony ither body. Forby I'll maybe be able to pay him mair than plenty ithers could pay him, an' that is efter a' the point to be maist considered. What do ye think?"
But Mrs. Sinclair could not think; she merely indicated to him that he might please himself and make his own arrangements with the boy, which Andrew did, and Robert went to work with him the following week. He was a mass of nerves and was horribly afraid—indeed, this fear never left him for years—but, young as he was, he recognized his responsibility, to his mother and the rest of the family. He was now its head, and had to shoulder the burden of providing for it, and so his will drove him to work in the pit, when his soul revolted at the very thought of it. Always the horror of the tragedy was with him, down to its smallest detail; and sometimes, even at work, when his mind wandered for a moment from his immediate task, he would start up in terror, almost crying out again as he had done on the day of the accident.
Andrew kept his word and was good to the boy now in his care. Indeed, he took, as some said, more care of the boy than if Robert had been his own, for he tried to save him from every little detail that might remind him of the accident.
"That's yours, Robin," he said, when pay-day came, as he handed to the boy the half of the pay earned.