—"why was it? What had I done? It was a strange thing to choose me out of so many. I was hardly worth it. To have chosen another man would have served her better."
He did not know how the days passed at the Works. The men began to gaze at him askance and mutter when he went by.
"Th' feyther went daft," they said. "Is this chap goin' th' same way?"
It was only the look of his face which made them say so. He got through his work one way or another. But the days were his dread. The nights, strange and dreadful enough, were better than the broad daylight, with the scores of hands about him and the clangor of hammers and whir of machinery. He fell into the habit of going to the engine-room and standing staring at the engine, fascinated by it. Once he drew nearer and nearer with such a look in his eye that Floxham began to regard him stealthily. He went closer, pace by pace, and at last made a step which brought a shout from Floxham, who sprang upon him and tore him away.
"What art at, tha foo'?" he yelled. "Does tha want to go whoam on a shutter?"
Wakening, with a long breath, he said:
"I forgot, that was it. I was thinking of another thing."
The time came at length when he had altered so that when he went out his mother and Christian often sat up together half the night trembling with a fear neither of them would have put into words. As they sat trying to talk, each would glance at the other stealthily, and when their eyes met, each would start as if with some guilty thought.
