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Walking was not so easy now. The hammer had hit so hard, his right leg was dull and dead, he had to drag it along with him, like a sort of supercargo. That was peculiar, for usually both hammer and electricity worked upon his left leg, but now they had got his right leg and his right arm too. His whole right side was paralysed.

On he went, behind the wood and along the path towards the Snook, staggering and dragging the leg, bareheaded and bedaubed with mud, his red-injected eye fixed feverishly upon the headstock of the Neptune which showed above the last row of houses that bordered the Snook. Although he wished to go quickly he went very slowly; he was all bound and clogged; he knew that he was going slowly and this infuriated him. He tried to make himself go quicker and could not; he had the idea that something was happening at the Neptune, a conspiracy or a catastrophe, and that he would not get there in time. This drove him frantic.

Then the rain came on, a heavy lashing shower. The rain streamed upon him and upon his old bare head. The rain flattened the long grey hair upon his old bare head, washed the mud into his eyes, battered and soaked and blinded him.

He stopped, all the fury washed out of him, and he stood quite still under the hissing rain. He was frightened. And suddenly he began to cry. His tears mingled with the rain and wetted him the more. He moved blindly forward. He wanted shelter.

At the end of the row of houses which bordered the Snook stood a small public-house, known as The Hewer’s Rest, a poor and wretched place which was kept by a widow named Susan Mitchell. Nobody went there except the poorest workers from around the Snook. But Richard went there, into the public-house known as The Hewer’s Rest.

He came in as though blown by a gust of wind and rain and he stood on the stone floor, dripping wet and swaying upon his feet like an old drunk tramp. Only two men were in the bar, two labouring men in moleskins, who were playing dominoes, their empty beer mugs beside them on the one trestle table. They stared at Richard and they laughed. They did not know Richard. They thought Richard was an old tramp who had certainly had his gill. One winked at the other and spoke to Richard.

“How, hinny?” he said. “Ye’ve been to a weddin’ I see.”

Richard looked at him and something in Richard’s look, as Richard swayed there, made both of the men laugh. They shook with laughter. Then the second man said:

“Niver mind, man. We’ve all been glee-eyed in our time.”

And he took Richard by the shoulders and steered him to the wooden settle at the window. Richard fell into the settle. He did not know where he was and he did not know who were these two men who both stared at him. He fumbled in his pocket with his numb hand for his handkerchief and as he pulled it out a coin came with it and rolled on the stone floor. It was a half-crown.

The second man picked up the coin and spat on it and grinned.

“Eh, mon,” he said. “You’re a champion, right enough. Is it a half-gill, hinny, a half-gill the piece?”

Richard did not understand, so the second man rapped on the counter hard:

“Three half-gills,” he called out.

A woman came out of the back, a thin dark woman with a pale face. She filled three measures of whisky but as she filled the third she looked doubtfully at Richard.

“He’d do better without it,” she said.

The first man said:

“A drop more’ll do him no harm.”

The second man came over to Richard.

“Here, hinny,” he said. “Drink this.”

Richard took the glass the man gave him and drank what was in the glass. It was whisky and the whisky took his breath and warmed him inside and started the hammer beating inside his head. The whisky made him remember the Neptune too. He thought it had stopped raining. The men were staring at him, too, until at last he became frightened of the men. He remembered himself as Richard Barras, owner of the Neptune, a man of dignity and substance. He wanted to be out, away from here and at the Neptune. He rose with an effort from the settle and staggered at the door. The laughter of the men followed him.

When Richard came out of The Hewer’s Rest the rain had ceased and the sky broken. The bright sun, striking across the steaming waste of the Snook, glittered into his eyes and hurt them, but through the blinding brightness he made out the headstocks of the Neptune rising in a kind of celestial glory. The Neptune, his Neptune, the Neptune of Richard Barras. He struck across the Snook.

The journey across the Snook was a strange and dreadful journey. Richard Barras was not conscious of the journey. His feet stumbled amongst the sodden hummocks and slushy runnels of the troubled land. His feet betrayed him and threw him mercilessly. He crawled and climbed. He floundered like a strange amphibian. But he knew nothing. He did not feel it when he fell, nor when he got up and fell again. His body was dead, his mind was dead, but his spirit soared in a great live purpose. The Neptune, the Neptune pit, the glory of those rising headstocks of the Neptune drew his spirit and held it. The rest was a mere vague nightmare.

But he did not reach the Neptune pit. Half-way across the Snook he fell and did not rise. His face beneath its crust of mud was ashen, his lips dry and blue, his breath coming in a quick stertor. There was no electricity now. The electricity was gone, leaving his body flaccid; but the hammering was bad again, the hammering was worse. It beat and beat inside his head and tried to burst again. Feebly he tried to rise. Then the hammer in Richard’s head struck one final blow. He fell forward and did not move. The last rays of the setting sun, striking across the charred headstocks of the pit, lit up the troubled land and found him there, quite dead. His lifeless hand, stretched forwards, grasped a handful of dirt.

EIGHTEEN

It was the day of the Third Reading of the Mines Bill, which had now reached the Report Stage, skilfully whittled away and studded with Opposition Amendments. At this moment an amendment in the name of the hon. member for Keston, Mr. St. Clair Boone, was under consideration. Mr. St. Clair Boone, with admirable legal precision, had formally begged to move that in line 3 of clause 7 before the word “appointed” there should be inserted the word “duly.” For over three hours a bland discussion had resulted on this quibble, affording ample opportunity for the Government and its adherents in the Opposition to eulogise the Bill.

Seated with folded arms and expressionless face David listened to the debate. One after another the Government henchmen rose to enumerate the difficulties with which the Government was faced and the extraordinary efforts the Government were making, and would continue to make, to overcome them. Burning with indignation, David listened — speeches by Dudgeon, Bebbington, Hume and Cleghorn, every word an expression of compromise, of procrastination. His ear, trained by experience and attuned by his present emotion, caught the inflection in every phrase — the latent apology, the sedulous intention to make the best of a bad job. Seated there, cold yet burning, David waited to catch the Speaker’s eye. He must speak. Impossible to sit passively under this betrayal. Was it for this he had worked, fought, dedicated his life? As he waited, all his exertion in those last years came before him: his humble beginning in the Federation office, his struggle through the welter of local politics, his long and unremitting effort through these last years — striving, drudging, putting all his soul into the work. And to what purpose if this futile measure, this repudiation of every pledge, this travesty of justice, marked the consummation of it all!