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THE children of the poor begin early to earn their bread. Legislature has stepped in to regulate the age and hours for labour in manufacturing districts, and to provide education for the very humblest. Jabez Clegg was not born in these blissful times, and he only narrowly escaped the common lot.

He was not eight years old, yet Simon, on whom war-prices pressed as heavily as on his neighbours, began to discuss with Bess the necessity for sending the lad to Simpson’s factory (where Arkwright’s machinery was first set in motion).

“He mun goo as sune as the new year taks a fair grip,” decided Simon, and 1805 was at its last gasp as he said it.

But the new year brought Jabez a reprieve by the uncourtly hands of Joshua Brookes. Meeting Simon and Jabez at a stall in the Apple-market, where, the better to bargain, he had laid down a pile of old classical school-books (Joshua was a collector of these, which he retailed again to the boys at prices varying with his mood, or his estimate of the purchaser’s pocket), he accosted the former.