James T. Boulton

the room, she went and picked up the broken vase, and the
flowers.

"Wait a minute!" she said.

The three men waited in silence while she put the bits of
glass and the flowers in the ashpan, and mopped up the water
with a duster. Then they lifted the body and put it on the
cloths, and stood up with a sigh, keeping their eyes on the man.

"Eh, what a job, what a job, to be sure!" the manager
was saying, rubbing his brow with trouble and perplexity.
"Never knew such a thing in my life, never! They'd no
business to ha' left 'im, you know, no business to ha' left him.
I never knew such a thing in my life! Fell over him clean as a
whistle, an' shut him in. Not ten feet of space, there wasn't
-- yet it never bruised him."

He looked down at the dead man, lying serene, half naked,
all grimed with coal-dust.

" ''Sphyxiated,' the doctor said. I never knew anything
like it. It seems as if it had to be. Clean over him, an' shut
'im in, like a vault" -- he made a sweeping gesture with his hand.

"It wor that!" corroborated one of the men.

They forced the horror of the thing upon the woman's
imagination, and it gripped her as in some great invisible hand.

"Don't take on!" said the manager, "it's no good now,
Missis, it isna. It's a bad job, I know it is, but ----"

Then they heard the girl's voice upstairs calling shrilly:
"Mother, mother -- who is it? Mother! -- who is it?"

Elizabeth hurried to the foot of the stairs and opened the
door:

"Go to sleep!" she commanded sharply. "What are you
shouting about? Go to sleep at once -- there's nothing ----"

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