"Is that all?"
"By the time your hands are cut into mince-meat you'll think it's enough," was the grim reply, and before Fred could speak again the day's labor had begun. The black fragments came through the chute with a roar which was deafening, and the "green hand" was at a loss to distinguish coal from slate.
"Take out the dull, grayish stuff," Chunky shouted, as he seized from the moving mass sufficient fragments to serve as specimens, and in a short time Fred began to have a general idea of his duties.
Before the forty minutes "nooning" had come around his hands were cut and bleeding; but the thought of his mother, who looked to him for support, was enough to keep him busily at work, and when the whistle sounded he had most assuredly earned half of the thirty-five cents.
A short rest, a lunch eaten amid the sooty vapor, which caused one to fancy he was gazing through a veil whenever he glanced across the building, and then the fatiguing labor was recommenced, to be ended only at the stroke of six, when miners, buttys, mule drivers and bosses hastened to the surface of the earth once more after having been deprived of sunlight for nearly twelve hours.
Without paying any especial attention to the fact, Fred noticed that although he was among the last to leave the breaker, the majority of the boys followed close behind as he started toward home.
In order to reach the company's store it was necessary to traverse a mirey road on which were no habitations for nearly fifty yards, and when Fred was half this distance from the breaker, a voice from behind shouted:
"Hi! Hold on a bit, you new feller!"
Fred turned to see a dozen of those who had been at work near him, advancing threateningly.
"What do you want?" he asked, regretting now that he had not hurried on ahead as Chunky suggested shortly before the whistle sounded.