gesture. By this time there was not a sound in the crowded room. Even the
wildest and most wolfish of the greeners were staring silently, craning
brown necks forward.

"And his wife ran to him, and he falls against her; and he says, 'Lay me
down, Judith, and don't you let em wake me--not the young uns,' he says
'not for nothing and nobody. For if it was the trump of the Most High,'
he says--and Isaac was a religious man, and careful in his speech--'I
must have my sleep.' And she laid him down, and the children and she
watched--and by midnight Isaac turned himself over. He just opened his
eyes once, and groaned. And he never spoke no more--he was gone before
mornin.--And his master gave Judith five shillings towards the coffin,
and the men in the shop, they raised the rest."

The old man paused. He stood considering a moment, his face and ragged
beard thrown out--a spot of greyish white--against the figures behind,
his eyes blinking painfully under the gas.

"Well, we've tried many things," he said at last. "We've tried strikes
and unions, and it isn't no good. There's always one treading on
another, and if you don't do it, someone else will. It's the _law_ as'll
have to do it. You may take that and smoke it!--you won't get nothing
else. Why!"--his hoarse voice trembled--"why, they use us up cruel in the
sort of shop I work for. Ten or twelve years, and a man's all to pieces.
It's the irons, and the heat, and the sitting--_you_ know what it is.
I've lasted fifteen year, but I'm breaking up now. If my master give me
the sack for speaking here I'll have nothing but the Jewish Board of
Guardians to look to. All the same, I made up my mind as I'd come and say
how they served Isaac."