"
Yet on the Saturday evening there was something more noted still.
The men stood about when they had come up for their wages to the
office, where, but a week before, Harold had paid them, with a sore
struggle to see and to count aright, as some even then had observed;
and at last their spokesman had explained their great desire to do
something themselves in memory of "the best friend they ever had," as
they truly called him. Some of them had seen memorial-windows, and
they wanted Mr. Yolland to take from each a small weekly subscription
throughout the winter, to adorn the new chapel with windows. "With
the history of Samson a killin' of the lion," called out a gruff
voice. It was the voice of the father of the boy whom Harold had
rescued on Neme Heath.
"So," said George Yolland, as he told me, "the poor fellows' hearty
way was almost more than one could bear, but I knew Alison would have
me try to turn it to some sort of good to themselves; so I stood up
and said I'd take it on one condition only. They knew very well what
vexed Mr. Alison most in themselves, and the example he had set--how
he had striven to make them give up making beasts of themselves.
Wouldn't they think with me it was insulting him to let a drunkard
have a hand in doing a thing to his memory? So I would manage their
collection on condition they agreed that whoever took more than his
decent pint a day--or whatever else sober men among them chose to fix
it at--should have his money returned on the spot.
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