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His growth and strength came early; I remember noticing him first as a powerful fellow, not more than seventeen or eighteen years old, but already doing a man's work as a gravel-digger. When that work slackened after two or three years, he got employment not willingly, but because times were bad at night-work with the "ballast-train" on the railway. Exhausting if not brutalizing labour, that is.

Then he got up the slope about a dozen yards, an' begun to go back'ards 'till he come to Dame Smith's wall, and that turn'd 'n, and he begun to go back'ards again down the gully. I did laugh. He bin at work all night on the ballast-train, an' come back reg'lar fagged out, an' hadn't had no vittles an' a feller wants something and then the fust glass he has do's for 'n.

The conversation was interrupted by a steadily increasing rattle, and a great light that moved swiftly blazed on the camp. It faded as a ballast-train rolled out upon the bank which traversed the swamp, with a swarm of indistinct figures clinging to the low cars.

There is at least no superiority in their outlook, no pharisaism. Listen, for proof of it, to a talk of Bettesworth's about a neighbour who had been working with the "ballast-train" on the railway all night.

After that he had a long spell of unemployment, and was on the point of going back to the ballast-train as a last resource when, by good fortune, he got his present job. He has been a coal-carter for three or four years a fact which testifies to his efficiency.