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e shed. In the wall of this box contrivance a small window opened on his arrival, and a clerk was beheld within.
Candlass said: "Line up, boys; one at a time."
Mike elbowed himself to leading position, looking round at his new friend. "You come with me, lad." And when some grumbled, "Well, well," he said. "We all have a chance."
The man to whom Candlass had decided to give another trial strolled backward and stood beyond the group so as to be last in the string.
"Now then, come along," said Smithers, and tapped twice with the end of a fountain pen on the little ledge before the diminutive window. The "Push," realising that all would have a chance, seeing how few there were, did not crowd now. There was more of: "You go ahead"--"No, that's all right, you go!"--than of anxiety. One by one they stepped up to the wicket, to one side of which Smithers leant, and in front of which Candlass had taken his stand. Each in turn exchanged a few quiet words with these two; the clerk within, pen in hand, bent over his tome, giving ear at the window. Once or twice Candlass looked round and beckoned to a man, when the group, milling instead of retaining the queue, was slow to decide who should go next. He did this by raising a hand, thumb and forefinger in air, looking keen and cold in some man's eye, and then flicking down the forefinger and dropping his hand to his side again. While this signing on was still in progress there entered the shed, slowly swinging his legs forward, clad in dirty khaki, large-hatted like the young man of whom we have already heard, a close-lipped, short-nosed youth. Candlass remarked him as he came in and said: "All right, you. Come ahead."
"One of the fellows what come down in the cars," it was suggested, or explained.
A little later there came a man in a long coat, tweed cap, heavy boots, leggings, wearing spectacles.
"What's this blown in?" one asked.
Smithers, by the side of the wicket, drew a deep breath.
"All right. Come ahead," called Candlass.
Mike, standing over to one side with those who had already signed on, offered explanation:
"He's one of them young fellers from up behind somewheres. Comes from feedin' pigs, and doin' the chores, and what they call learnin' farmin'." He noticed that his newly adopted friend had allowed some others to precede him and had not yet signed on. "Go on there forward, young feller," he admonished. "Take your turn there after Four Eyes with the coat."
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