Knapping Flints 61 



grievance that he is paid nothing for sinking the pit. 

 His wages are calculated on the number of ' one-horse 

 jags ' or cartloads he can bring to the surface. Occa- 

 sionally there are accidents. Where there is much 

 sand to be pierced ere the chalk is reached the walls 

 sometimes fall in and make the labour all in vain. 

 Life is seldom endangered, however, though men at 

 times have been crippled by being too venturesome. 

 He likes the work for its independence and because it 

 was his father's trade, and he could not endure regular 

 hours or a timekeeper. As to loneliness, he does not 

 know what it means. But here he stops with a shout 

 of triumph, for down the flint has come at last. Now 

 he must drag it to the opening of the gallery, where, 

 if he cannot by raising it on his head and jerking with 

 neck, shoulders, and arms toss it up on the landing- 

 place, he will crack it with a hammer and raise the 

 fragments. Outside the chalk has formed a white 

 encrustation, but the heart is as black as ebony, for, as 

 he puts it, ' floor 'uns be the best, wall 'uns the second 

 best, top 'uns the worst of all.' Why that should be 

 so he never asks. Sartin' sure the chalk has been 

 made by water, for he has found cockle-shells and 

 fishes and little sarpent things in it ; but, like Topsy, 

 the flint growed there. 



I doubt if there is any harder toil than his in exist- 

 ence. Working in a ' burrow ' that is to say, in a 

 gallery three feet high and with a pickaxe endea- 

 vouring to loosen the chalk round a little crag of flint 



