Frank Oldfield Lost and Found

Excerpt

Lost.

“Have you seen anything of our Sammul?” These words were addressed in a very excited voice to a tall rough-looking collier, who, with Davy-lamp in hand, was dressed ready for the night-shift in the Bank Pit of the Langhurst Colliery. Langhurst was a populous village in the south of Lancashire. The speaker was a woman, the regularity of whose features showed that she had once been good-looking, but from whose face every trace of beauty had been scorched out by intemperance. Her hair uncombed, and prematurely grey, straggled out into the wind. Her dress, all patches, scarcely served for decent covering; while her poor half-naked feet seemed rather galled than protected by the miserable slippers in which she clattered along the pavement, and which just revealed some filthy fragments of stockings.

“No, Alice,” was the man’s reply; “I haven’t seen anything of your Sammul.” He was turning away towards the pit, when he looked back and added, “I’ve heard that you and Thomas are for making him break his teetottal; have a care, Alice, have a care—you’ll lose him for good and all if you don’t mind.”

She made him no answer, but turning to another collier, who had lately come from his work, and was sauntering across the road, she repeated her question,—

“Jim, have you seen anything of our Sammul?”

“No, I know nothing about him; but what’s amiss, Alice? you’re not afraid that he’s slipped off to the ‘George’?”

“The ‘George!’ no, Jim, but I can’t make it out; there must be summut wrong, he came home about an hour since, and stripped and washed him, then he goes right up into the chamber, and after a bit comes down into the house with his best shoes and cap on. ‘Where art going, Sammul?’ says I. He says nothing, but crouches him down by the hearth-stone, and stares into the fire as if he seed summat strange there. Then he looks all about him, just as if he were reckoning up the odd bits of things; still he says nothing. ‘Sammul,’ said I, ‘won’t you take your tea, lad?’ for it were all ready for him on the table. Still he doesn’t speak, but just gets up and goes to the door, and then to the hearth-stone, and then he claps his head on his hands as though he were fretting o’er summat. ‘Aren’t you well, Sammul?’ says I. ‘Quite well, mother,’ says he, very short like. So I just turns me round to go out, when he jumps up and says, ‘Mother:’ and I could see by the tears in his eyes that he were very full. ‘Mother,’ says he again, and then he crouches him down again. You wouldn’t believe, how strange I felt—you might have knocked me down with a feather; so I just goes across to old Jenny’s to ax her to come and look at him, for I thought he mightn’t be right in his head. I wasn’t gone many minutes, but when I got back our Sammul were not there, but close by where he were sitting I seed summat lapped up in a piece of papper, lying on the table. I opened it, and there were a five-shilling piece and a bit of his hair, and he’d writ on the papper, ‘From Sammul, for dear mother.’ Oh, what must I do—what must I do?...