"Seth"

He came in one evening at sun set with the empty coal-train--his dull young face pale and heavy-eyed with weariness, his corduroy suit dusty and travel-stained, his worldly possessions tied up in the smallest of handkerchief bundles and slung upon the stick resting on his shoulder--and naturally his first appearance attracted some attention among the loungers about the shed dignified by the title of “dépôt.” I say “naturally,” because arrivals upon the trains to Black Creek were so scarce as to be regarded as curiosities; which again might be said to be natural. The line to the mines had been in existence two months, since the English company had taken them in hand and pushed the matter through with an energy startling to, and not exactly approved by, the majority of good East Tennesseeans. After the first week or so of arrivals--principally Welsh and English miners, with an occasional Irishman--the trains had returned daily to the Creek without a passenger; and accordingly this one created some trifling sensation.

Not that his outward appearance was particularly interesting or suggestive of approaching excitement. He was only a lad of nineteen or twenty, in working English-cut garb, and with a short, awkward figure, and a troubled, homely face--a face so homely and troubled, in fact, that its half-bewildered look was almost pathetic.

He advanced toward the shed hesitatingly, and touched his cap as if half in clumsy courtesy and half in timid appeal. “Mesters,” he said, “good-day to yo'.”

The company bestirred themselves with one accord, and to the roughest and most laconic gave him a brief “Good-day.”

“You're English,” said a good-natured Welshman, “ar'n't you, my lad?”

“Ay, mester,” was the reply: “I'm fro' Lancashire.”

He sat down on the edge of the rough platform, and laid his stick and bundle down in a slow, wearied fashion.

“Fro' Lancashire,” he repeated in a voice as wearied as his action--“fro' th' Deepton coalmines theer. You'll know th' name on 'em, I ha' no doubt. Th' same company owns 'em as owns these.”

“What!” said an outsider--“Langley an 'em?”

The boy turned himself round and nodded. “Ay,” he answered--“them. That was why I comn here. I comn to get work fro'--fro' him.”

He faltered in his speech oddly, and even reddened a little, at the same time rubbing his hands together with a nervousness which seemed habitual to him.

“Mester Ed'ard, I mean,” he added--“th' young mester as is here. I heerd as he liked 'Merika, an'--an' I comn.”

The loungers glanced at each other, and their glance did not mean high appreciation of the speaker's intellectual powers. There was a lack of practicalness in such faith in another man as expressed itself in the wistful, hesitant voice.

“Did he say he'd give you work?” asked the first man who had questioned him, the Welshman Evans.

“No. I dunnot think--I dunnot think he'd know me if he seed me. Theer wur so many on us.”

Another exchange of glances, and then another question: “Where are you going to stay?”

The homely face reddened more deeply, and the lad's eyes--dull, soft, almost womanish eyes--raised themselves to the speaker's. “Do yo' knew anybody as would be loikely to tak' me in a bit” he said, “until I ha' toime to earn th' wage to pay? I wouldna wrong no mon a penny as had trusted me.”

There was manifest hesitation, and then some one spoke: “Lancashire Jack might.”

“Mester,” said the lad to Evans, “would you moind speakin' a word fur me? I ha' had a long tramp, an' I'm fagged-loike, an'”--He stopped and rose from his seat with a hurried movement. “Who's that theer as is comin'?” he demanded. “Isna it th' young mester?”

The some one in question was a young man on horseback, who at that moment turned the corner and rode toward the shed with a loose rein, allowing his horse to choose his own pace.

“Ay,” said the lad with an actual tremor in his excited voice--“it's him, sure enow,” and sank back on his seat again as if he had found himself scarcely strong enough to stand. “I--I ha' not 'aten much fur two or three days,” he said to Evans.

There was not a man on the platform who did not evince some degree of pleasure at the approach of the new-comer. The last warm rays of the sun, already sinking behind the mountains, seemed rather to take pride in showing what a debonair young fellow he was, in glowing kindly upon his handsome face and strong, graceful figure, and touching up to greater brightness his bright hair.

The face was one to be remembered with a sentiment approaching gratitude for the mere existence of such genial and unspoiled good looks, but the voice that addressed the men was one to be loved, and loved without stint, it was so clear and light-hearted and frank.

“Boys,” said he, “good-evening to you. Evans, if you could spare me a minute”--

Evans rose at once.

“I'll speak to him,” he said to the lad at his side. “His word will go further with Lancashire Jack than mine would.” He went to the horse's side, and stood there for a few minutes talking in an undertone, and then he turned to the stranger and beckoned. “Come here,” he said.

The lad took up his bundle and obeyed the summons, advancing with an awkward almost stumbling step, suggestive of actual weakness as well as the extremity of shyness. Reaching the two men, he touched his cap humbly, and stood with timorous eyes upraised to the young man's face.

Langley met his glance with a somewhat puzzled look, which presently passed away in a light laugh. “I'm trying to remember who you are, my lad,” he said, “but I shall be obliged to give it up. I know your face, I think, but I have no recollection of your name. I dare say I have seen you often enough. You came from Deepton, Evans tells me.”

“Ay, mester, fro' Deepton.”

“A long journey for a lad like you to take alone,” with inward pity for the heavy face.

“Ay, mester.”

“And now you want work?”

“If you please, mester.”

“Well, well!” cheerily, “we will give it to you. There's work enough, though it isn't such as you had at Deepton. What is your name?”

“Seth, mester--Seth Raynor,” shifting the stick and bundle in uneasy eagerness from one shoulder to another. “An' I'm used to hard work, mester. It wur na easy work we had at th' Deepton mine, an' I'm stronger than I look. It's th' faggedness as makes me trembly--an' hunger.”

“Hunger?”

“I ha' not tasted sin' th' neet afore last,” shamefacedly. “I hadna th' money to buy, an' it seemt loike I could howd out.”

“Hold out!” echoed Langley in some excitement. “That's a poor business, my lad. Here, come with me. The other matter can wait, Evans.”

The downcast face and ungainly figure troubled him in no slight degree as they moved off together, they seemed to express in some indescribable fashion so much of dull and patient pain, and they were so much at variance with the free grandeur of the scene surrounding them. It was as if a new element were introduced into the very air itself. Black Creek was too young yet to have known hunger or actual want of any kind. The wild things on the mountain sides had scarcely had time to learn to fear the invaders of their haunts or understand that they were to be driven backward. The warm wind was fragrant with the keen freshness of pine and cedar. Mountain and forest and sky were stronger than the human stragglers they closed around and shut out from the world.

“We don't see anything like that in Lancashire,” said Langley. “That kind of thing is new to us, my lad, isn't it?” with a light gesture toward the mountain, in whose side the workers had burrowed.