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Updated: June 21, 2025
At the sight of her visitor's pale face, and tear-stained cheeks, and quivering lips, she had dropped her work and stood up, with a terrible presentiment of evil with that dread which is never altogether absent from the mind of a collier's wife. She did not speak, but stood with wide-open eyes staring at her visitor. "Mary, my poor girl," Mrs. Haden began.
As for Jane Haden, her reproaches to her husband for in the first place matching Flora against a young dog, and in the second for allowing Jack to fight so noted a man as Tom Walker, were so fierce and vehement, that until Jack was able to leave his bed and take his place by the fire, Bill was but little at home; spending all his time, even at meals, in that place of refuge from his wife's tongue, "the Chequers."
"Well, lass," he said, as he entered the room, "so the poor gal's gone. I heard it as I came along. Thou'st's had a hard two days on't. Hulloa! what's that?" "It's the baby, Bill," his wife said. "What hast brought un here for?" he asked roughly. Jane Haden did not answer directly, but standing in front of her husband, removed the handkerchief which covered the baby's face as he lay on her arm.
It was clear that, as he had hoped, the miners working there had escaped the force of the explosion, which had, without doubt, played awful havoc in the parts of the mine where the greater part of the men were at work. "Stop! stop!" Jack shouted, as they came up to him. "Is it fire, Jack?" Bill Haden, who was one of the first, asked. "Yes, Bill; didn't you feel it?"
Brook said promptly. Jack looked immensely surprised. Mr. Brook smiled. "I noticed an extraordinary change in Williams's reports, both in the handwriting and expression. Now I understand it. You work the same stall as Haden, do you not?" "Yes, sir, but not the same shift; he had a mate he has worked with ever since my father was killed, so I work the other shift with Harvey."
It was quite a levée, and it was only the fact that the gloom of a terrible calamity hung over Stokebridge that prevented the demonstration being noisy as well as enthusiastic. By six o'clock all his friends had seen him, and Jack sat down with Bill Haden and his wife.
"You're a good plucked 'un, Jack," Bill Haden said, "and I owt not t' ha done it, but I didn't think it hurt 'ee, leastways not more nor a boy owt to be hurt, to try if 'ee be game!" "And what's you and t' dogs been doing to-day, Jack?" the miner asked, as he began at his dinner.
On it I found an addition to my directions to the lagoon an addition made by two prospectors, Swincer and Haden, who had been in this locality two months after our first visit. I did not meet either Mr. Swincer or Mr. Haden, but I heard that my board had been of great service to them, for without it they would not have known of the lagoon, where they camped some time.
Thou'st wanted a leathering for soom time, Jack Simpson, wi' thy larning and thy ways, and I'm not sorry to be the man to gi' it thee." "No, no," Bill Haden said, and the men round for the most part echoed his words. "'Taint fair for thee to take t' lad at his word. He be roight. I hadn't ought to ha' matched Flora no more.
By her he had three children: Deborah, his only daughter, who married Seymour Haden of London, a surgeon, but later and better known for his skill in etching; George William, who became an engineer and railway manager, and who went to Russia, and finally died at Brighton, in England, Dec. 24, 1869; Joseph Swift, born at New London, Aug. 12, 1825, and who died at Stonington, Jan. 1, 1840.
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