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Her children were taught that it was a disgrace not to resent a wrong, and Robert, though only a boy, was always sturdily standing up against the things he considered wrong at the pit-head. Robert dreamed and built his future castles. There was great work ahead to do.
They may be coarse in their talk, an' a' that sort o' thing; but they are as kind-hearted as onybody else, an' kinder than some." "Oh; I hae nae doot," she answered relentingly. "I didna mean that at a'; but the pit-head doesna make them ony better, an' it's no' wark for them at a'."
When we reached the pit-head we found a line of German civilians waiting to go down into the mines as we waited for the cages to come up we overheard some of their conversation of course we could not understand it, but one of the old prisoners translated it for me. The Germans had noticed that we were new men and they asked the guard what nationality we were.
At the northern extremity of Druridge Bay is the little fishing village of Hauxley, with the chimneys and pit-head engines of Ratcliffe and Broomhill Collieries darkening the sky to the south-west. Passing the Bondicar rocks and rounding the point we enter the "fairway" for Warkworth Harbour and Amble, where a brisk exportation of the coal of the neighbourhood is carried on.
There was a signal. Some men ran to the pit-head carrying hot bricks and blankets. The doctors took off their coats, and arranged bottles and tinkling apparatus on chairs stuck in the mud. The air smelt of iodoform. A cloth was laid on the ground from the shaft to the engine-house, and stretchers were placed handy. The women, some carrying infants, broke rank.
Again he was waiting in the dark wintry mornings on Mysie, so that she would not be afraid to go to work on the pit-head; ay, and he was happy to take the windward side of her in the storm, and shield her from the winter's blast, tying her little shawl about her ears and making her believe he did not feel the cold at all.
"My missus told it me at the pit-head when she brought me my breakfast," said a pikeman to his comrade, and he struck a vigorous blow at the broadseam on which he was working. "It is not ten mile," said his companion. "They'll be here by noon." "There is a good deal to do in their way," said the first pikeman.
"I mind," said Robert reminiscently, "when Mysie an' me started on the pit-head, Mag Lindsay was awfu' guid to Mysie; an' I've kent her often sharin' her piece wi' wee Dicky Tamson, whiles when he had nane, if his mother happened to be on the fuddle for a day or twa. There's no a kinderhearted woman in Lowwood, mither, than Mag Lindsay.
Their shouts drawing no response, the younger and nimbler of the two he was a mere boy, for all his amazing growth of beard put his foot in the bucket and went down on the rope, kicking off the sides of the shaft with his free foot. A group of diggers, gathering round the pit-head, waited for the tug at the rope. It was quick in coming; and the lad was hauled to the surface.
'Man against nature, he thought, 'I back the man. The struggle in which he was so powerless to give aid, became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged his own good faith therein. The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier himself descended. The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some places which would never be reached.
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