It appeared to he
quite true that a boy was dead. It was the little boy who,
sent to get a loaf for his mother, had complained before the
shop was opened of his fainting energies. He had fallen in
the fray, and it was thought, to use the phrase of the comely
dame who tried to rescue him, "that he was quite smothered."
They carried him out of the shop; the perspiration poured off
him; he had no pulse. He had no friends there. "I'll stand
by the body," said the comely dame, "though I lose my turn."
At this moment, Stephen Morley, for the reader has doubtless
discovered that the stranger who held colloquy with the
colliers was the friend of Walter Gerard, arrived at the
tommy-shop, which was about half-way between the house where
he had passed the night and Wodgate. He stopped, inquired,
and being a man of science and some skill, decided, after
examining the poor boy, that life was not extinct. Taking the
elder Diggs aside, he said, "I am the editor of the Mowbray
Phalanx; I will not speak to you before these people; but I
tell you fairly you and your son have been represented to me
as oppressors of the people. Will it be my lot to report this
death and comment on it? I trust not.
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