Somehow he stuck to his work, and his comrades, who were rudely sympathetic, helped him to elude the foreman's watchfulness.

It was obvious that he could not keep it up, but the trouble often ended suddenly.

Then an evening came when he could scarcely drag himself to the bunk-house for supper.

It had rained all day and the building was overheated by a glowing stove and filled with the smell of rank tobacco and steaming clothes.

Charnock could not eat the roughly served food, and for a time sat slack and limp, with the sweat upon his face, and his arms on the table.