Briggs had not, dealt with
chemicals; then, on the skyline, a pit-head; then another; then a mining
village with three different kinds of methodist church and two picture
palaces; then a gap of dreary, dirty fields. And then, nearing dusk, the
village where my friend lived, and where also was the terminus of the
tram route.
We quitted the tram and walked down a street of those squalid brick
tenements which coal-mining seems to germinate like a rash upon the
earth's surface. The debris and the scaffoldings of pits were dotted
about the adjacent countryside. Sooty cabbage-patches occupied the
occasional interspaces in the ranks of houses. Briggs directed me across
a cinder path in one of these cabbage-patches. "See them three 'ouses at
the bottom of the 'ill? The end one's mine." We approached. No sign of
the wife. Surely she would be on the look-out for her husband? Also
there was a sister and a brother-in-law--the latter in a prosperous way
of business as a grocer near-by: Briggs had told me of them. Would not
they be watching for him? I began to be anxious. Not once, but several
times, I had heard of the wounded soldier returning to his home and
finding no home: both home and wife had gone.
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