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Jimmy had been sick yesterday but William had been excited and kept larking on and making the others laugh.

She got off the straw-filled mattress that was resting on the wooden platform and, shivering, hastily pulled on her clothes over her petticoat and under-bodice which she had slept in. When she was dressed she groped her way across the uneven floor to where Jimmy, William, Joe, and Annie were sleeping, and, her hands feeling among their heads, she fondled Jimmy's smooth, dark hair and William's crisp, fair hair and shook, them gently, and when they grunted she whispered,

"Come on, get up."

They made shivering, spluttering noises, then Jimmy coughed and said in a small voice, "What time is it?"

"Coming up to four as near as I can guess," she answered; "the sky's lightening. I'll blow the fire up and you'll have a drop of tea at ore you go. It'll warm you."

There was no more conversation, not even when presently they huddled round the fire and drank the hot, weak tea; not until they were ready to go did she speak again, then handing them each three slices of bread and fat tied up in a bait rag she said, "Make it spin out, it'll be a long day. But I'll have something ready for you when you come in....

Come on."

The light was breaking as they climbed the hill and stumbled across the half mile of hillocky land towards the main road and she didn't leave them until half an hour later when they could see each other's faces plainly. Then she nearly brought them all to tears with what she later termed to herself a daft action, for with a swift movement she flung out her arms and hugged them to her, and they clung to her like Annie and Joe would have done until she thrust them off and, turning from them, ran back up the road. They walked for another half hour before they reached the pit. Only once did they speak; that was when the pulleys came in sight and William said in a high, excited voice, "You frightened, our Jimmy?"

And Jimmy, lying bravely, said, "No; are you?" And William said honestly, "I don't know now whether I'm frighted or just excited but me belly's wobblin'. Like we'll know more the night." He laughed his warm laugh but Jimmy did not respond. He already knew what he would know the night.

Inside the yard they were lost amid a bustle of men and boys, some to their joint surprise much younger than themselves and none of them looking as if they had been washed for weeks. Jimmy started and turned

'round quickly when he heard a small boy address the man he was walking with as da. There were tliree boys with this man. He thought to himself, they must be all like the Fishers and go down with their da's.

To his fear now was added a deep sense of aloneness and he had the horrifying feeling that he was about to cry. He said to a man,

"Where's the office, mister? We've got to go to the office." And the man, pointing, said, "Ower there, lad."

A man sitting at a narrow, high desk said, "Yer name?" and he answered for both of them, saying, "Jimmy and William Brodie."

"Who's yer but tie

"What?"

"Yer but tie the man you're workin' for?"

"Oh, I think his name's Pollock."

"Well, don't stand there; you won't find him here, he'll be at the shaft bottom."

They went out and joined the crowd standing beneath the pulley way, then they never knew how it happened but they were crushed with four other boys into a small wire cage that suddenly fell into the earth at a terrific speed, causing their stomachs to come up into their throats.

When there was a bump they all fell together and tumbled out into what looked like a tunnel, but strangely not an entirely black tunnel. The roof, a few feet above their heads, showed crisscross pieces of wood holding up big boulders of rock and these pieces of wood were kept in place by nothing more than slender props dotted here and there along the tunnel. In the middle of the tunnel was piled skip on top of skip of coal reaching to the roof.

Jimmy said to one of his cage companions, "Who's Mr. Pollock?" and the boy said, "Come along o' me."

Mr. Pollock was an almost naked, coal-dusted, undersized man with two pin-points of light for eyes. He held a lantern above Jimmy's head and said, "You ... you the older?" and Jimmy nodded "Aye, Sir."

On this the boys who had been in the cage with them all laughed, and the man actually spat on them, then he said, "You'll go to number four gallery with Harry and Pat here." He indicated two of the boys.

"They'll show you the ropes. And it's rope you'll get if you don't pull your whack, understand?"

Jimmy did not now say, "Aye, Sir."

"Anyroad I'll see how you make out by the end of the day; they'll let me know." He again nodded at the boys.

"And now you." The lantern hung over William's fair head.

"You're trappin' young 'un. I'm goin' back up the road; I'll show you yer place. Important job you've got. Aye, 'tis that, important job."

Again there was laughter.

They all began to walk up the road, which still appeared to Jimmy like a tunnel, and they had gone about a hundred yards when he was pulled roughly aside by the man, and he gaped at the sight coming towards him.

A boy harnessed by ropes and a chain between his legs was on his hands and knees tugging up the incline a low bogie filled high with coal, while, behind, two small black creatures, heads down, bodies almost horizontal, pushed at it.

"There! them's workers for you." The but tie voice was loud with praise.

"Double shift they've done and still goin' at it. But they'll have something' to pick up. By lad, aye, they'll have a weighty packet come pay day."

Jimmy stumbled on, his eyes now standing well out of their sockets, and he started as the man said, "Here comes the partin' of the ways.

This way, me lad," and he turned to see William being thrust through a low door.

It was in the darkness behind the door that William knew it wasn't excitement that was filling his belly, but swirling, galloping fear.

The man now pushed open another low door and here William, who loved noise and laughter and chatter, felt the quietness of the grave drop round him like a shroud.

The man was pointing to a rope attached to the door.

"You sit there," he said, "and when anybody comes down the road" --he thumbed up the long narrow tunnel"--you pull on the string and open the door. Then close it again. Now I wasn't funnin' when I said this was an important job, lad. These are the air doors, the life's blood of the mine so to speak. You understand?"

William made the slightest movement with his head.

"Good enough, then. You'll be finished at five the night."

"Mister?" His voice was a mouse squeak.

"You not goin' to leave me the lantern?"

"Leave you the lantern? What you want to do, read? You're a funny little bugger, aren't you?" The man's laugh seemed to ricochet along the tunnel in an eerie wailing sound, and then he went through the door and William was left with the rope in his hand and in darkness blacker than any night he had ever imagined. The tears were now raining down his cheeks and he whimpered aloud, "Oh, our Cissie. Our Cis- she ."

They had been in the cave three weeks and Cissie would have said they were managing, and finely, if it weren't for the picture ever present in her mind of the two small figures spending the long days in the bowels of the earth.

Of the two, she was more concerned for William, for William the merry, as her da had called him, was no longer merry. Never as long as she lived would she forget the sight of them that first night when she had gone to meet them. Both of them as black as climbing boys, they had come stumbling towards her, Jimmy hardly able to speak, so weary was he, his knees and the cushions of his thumbs bleeding. But it was William who had troubled her most, for he had laid his head against her and cried, and she had put him on her back and carried him as if he were a baby.

William no longer cried; nor did he laugh anymore, not even on a Sunday when he was free. Strangely he spent most of his Sunday in the river sitting up to his neck in water. Even when it rained he would sit there until she pulled him out. Jimmy, too, washed himself in the river, but afterwards he would sleep nearly all day.

Yet, on the whole, things were working out and looking brighter, for this week, besides them all picking the early taties, she had got Mary settled into a good place. For this she had Parson Hedley to thank.

The house was some way off, outside Felling, and was owned by two maiden ladies called the Misses Tren- chard; they weren't rich but they were class and they were going to train Mary to be a general.

They employed no other servants. Mary was to have a shilling a week and a half day off once a fortnight and one Sunday a month and, glory of glories, a whole attic bedroom to herself. She was to rise at half-past five in the morning and she would be finished at half-past seven in the evening, after which she could do needlework if she liked.

The Misses Trenchard indicated they were doing Cissie a great favor in taking Mary, and that the girl had fallen on her feet. And so thought Cissie.

Another important thing was, with Mary's going, it made one less to sleep in the cave.

Cissie felt very tired on this Sunday morning for she and Jimmy had spent hours during the night trying to arrange the table and the box, the four wooden chairs and the chest of drawers in such a way that it would keep out the worst of the gale that had blown up with the twilight. Having arranged the table end up on top of the drawers and box, they had to dismantle them again when the wind threatened to topple the lot back into the cave and on to the beds.

Parson Hedley's church bell was ringing, which told her it was a quarter to eight. They were all still asleep and she was going to let them lie tor another hour. She had made a part of porridge and it was simmering between bricks on the smouldering fire.

After the storm, the morning was bright and fresh and gave her the urge to walk and stretch her legs, and so she decided not to wait until one of them was awake to send him for the skim but to go herself; it would only take twenty minutes each way. So, taking her mother's black shawl out of the box and picking up a pail, she went out and in the direction of Thornton's farm. Hetherington's was nearer but she had resolved that she would rather walk a hundred miles than spend a farthing with him.

At the top of the rise she stopped for a moment and looked about her.

The whole world looked clean;

the fells were soft and young in the morning light, their rocks made tender and warm with a dusting of lichen. She could see smoke rising from the chimneys in the hamlet and she felt no bitterness at the sight;

for one thing, up here it was free of the stench. She had laid down the law about that the first day they had set up house in the cave; there was no doing it just anywhere, she had warned them; even for number ones they had to go to the holes she had dug. Not one of them had questioned this inconvenient arrangement; it was just as if their da were talking to them.

She had seen only two women from the hamlet since they had come up here. Mrs. Snell had brought them a part of broth on the second day, and Mrs. Robinson had given her a loaf of bread, and because one of their hens had died on them she had brought her the head and feet to flavor the turnip soup. The thought had been kind but the result hadn't been tasty.

After a while she dropped down on to the main road. When she came to the high wall of Lord Fischel's estate she continued along it past the North Lodge, then branched off up a narrow cart track to the farm.

She thought afterwards it was a lucky day right from the start, for not only did old Martin serve her and give her a pint extra, but he gave her real milk, and a bit of pig's fat into the bargain.

As she walked back she wondered what it would be like never to have to worry about food, to be able to look at sufficient food to last them all for a week. If that day ever came she would know she had landed in heaven.

While skirting the edge of the quarry she decided that she would bring them here this afternoon and they could have a bit of play as they had done the Sunday before last.

It was as she passed the place where they had sat and saw the remains of the wall that Joe, Charlotte, and Sarah had built when they were playing houses, that the idea came into her head with such abrupt force that it jolted her to a stop, and some milk lapped over the side of the pail.

That was it, walls. That's what she would do, she'd build walls, three walls round the front of the cave. Hadn't she helped to puddle mud when her da was building the midden in the yard?

She laughed aloud. Why hadn't she thought of it before? All these stones here, hundreds and hundreds of them, they just wanted carting.

And they wouldn't have to go down to the bottom of the quarry either.

Now, with the bucket held stiffly outwards to steady it, her legs going between a walk and a trot, she came to the cave and startled them all awake by crying, "Come on! Come on, the lot of you's. Come on, get up. I've thought of something. You, Bella, push Jimmy."

"What's it? What's the matter?" Jimmy was sitting bolt upright, his eyes sleep-laden, his mouth agape;

William was resting on his elbow; Bella, her knuckles in her eyes, was rubbing sleep away; Sarah had not moved although she was awake, but Charlotte and Joe were kneeling up; only Annie and the baby remained asleep, and, standing before them, the milk pail still in her hand, she said, "We're going to build walls round on the outside, three walls.

An' not dry stone ones either 'cos they could be knocked over.

Real ones. "

When no one asked any questions but just stared at her, she put the pail on top of the chest; then, dropping on to her hunkers and bringing her eyes on a level with theirs, she said, "Don't you understand? We can build walls round the front." She flapped her hands backwards.

"It'll keep the rain out and give us more room."

Sarah pulled herself up slowly from under the patched quilt and asked quietly, "Will it be a real house then, our Cissie?"