His wife was the only one who could ever keep him cheerful under his lot, and his wedded life had lasted but six years; now there was his lad Bob and his little girl Clara to think of, and it only made him more miserable to look forward and see them going through hardships like his own.

Things were wrong somehow, and it seemed to him that 'if only we could have universal suffrage--' Sidney was only eighteen, and strong in juvenile Radicalism, but he had a fund of common sense, and such a conclusion as this of poor John's half-astonished, half-amused him.

However, the man's personality attracted him; it was honest, warm-hearted, interesting; the logic of his pleadings might be at fault, but Sidney sympathised with him, for all that.

He too felt that 'things were wrong somehow,' and had a pleasure in joining the side of revolt for revolt's sake.
Now in the same house with them dwelt a young woman of about nineteen years old; she occupied a garret, was seldom seen about, and had every appearance of being a simple, laborious girl, of the kind familiar enough as the silent victims of industrialism.

One day the house was thrown into consternation by the news that Miss Barnes--so she was named--had been arrested on a charge of stealing her employer's goods.
It was true, and perhaps the best way of explaining it will be to reproduce a newspaper report which Sidney Kirkwood thereafter preserved.
'On Friday, Margaret Barnes, nineteen, a single woman, was indicted for stealing six jackets, value 5_l_., the property of Mary Oaks, her mistress.