to the offices of the mine where she washed windows and scrubbed
floors. The position was a sort of recognition on the part of the mine
officials of the heroism of Cracked McGregor.

Nance McGregor was a small blue-eyed woman with a sharp nose. She wore
glasses and had the name in Coal Creek of being quick and sharp. She
did not stand by the fence to talk with the wives of other miners but
sat in her house and sewed or read aloud to her son. She subscribed
for a magazine and had bound copies of it standing upon shelves in the
room where she and the boy ate breakfast in the early morning. Before
the death of her husband she had maintained a habit of silence in her
house but after his death she expanded, and, with her red-haired son,
discussed freely every phase of their narrow lives. As he grew older
the boy began to believe that she like the miners had kept hidden
under her silence a secret fear of his father. Certain things she said
of her life encouraged the thought.

Norman McGregor grew into a tall broad-shouldered boy with strong
arms, flaming red hair and a habit of sudden and violent fits of
temper. There was something about him that held the attention. As he
grew older and was renamed by Uncle Charlie Wheeler he began going
about looking for trouble. When the boys called him "Beaut" he knocked
them down. When men shouted the name after him on the street he
followed them with black looks. It became a point of honour with him
to resent the name. He connected it with the town's unfairness to
Cracked McGregor.

In the house on the hillside the boy and his mother lived together
happily. In the early morning they went down the hill and across the
tracks to the offices of the mine. From the offices the boy went up