her death. It was an imposing-looking stone and Mrs. Newt was proud of it. She would often go and gaze at it where it stood in an out-of-the-way corner of the stonemason's yard; and one day she took Anthony to see it. Her only anxiety now was about her grave. There was one particular site near to a willow tree that she much desired. It belonged to a baker who had secured it some years before on learning that he was suffering from an intermittent heart. The unemployment among the weavers, added to the strike of the miners, was making it difficult for him to collect his money, and Mrs. Newt was hopeful that an offer of ready cash at the right moment might induce him to sell.
"It's a sad world," she confided to Anthony John as she stood affectionately regarding the stone on which the verse of a hymn had been carved implying that Mildred Emily Newt had departed for realms of endless bliss. "Can't say as I shall be sorry to leave it."
It promised to be a hard winter for the poor of Millsborough. The coal strike had ended only to make way for trouble in the steel works. Somewhere the other side of the world the crops had failed. Bread rose in price each week; and there were pinched and savage faces in the streets.
His uncle had gone up to the moors to try and
