not they are responsible for my man and what he was."

Beaut McGregor interrupted. "Well I think he is right," he declared,
leaning over the counter beside his mother and looking into her face.
"The miners don't want better things for their families, they want
more money to get drunk. We will close the doors here. We will put no
more money into bread to go into their gullets. They hated father and
he hated them and now I hate them also."

Beaut walked around the end of the counter and went with the mine
manager to the door. He locked it and put the key into his pocket.
Then he walked to the rear of the bake shop where his mother sat on a
box weeping. "It is time a man took charge here," he said.

Nance McGregor and her son sat in the bakery and looked at each other.
Miners came along the street, tried the door and went away grumbling.
Word ran from lip to lip up the hillside. "The mine manager has closed
Nance McGregor's shop," said the women leaning over back fences.
Children sprawling on the floors of the houses put up their heads and
howled. Their lives were a succession of new terrors. When a day
passed that a new terror did not shake them they went to bed happy.
When the miner and his woman stood by the door talking in low tones
they cried, expecting to be put to bed hungry. When guarded talk did
not go on by the door the miner came home drunk and beat the mother
and the children lay in beds along the wall trembling with fright.

Late that night a party of miners came to the door of the bakery and
beat upon it with their fists. "Open up here!" they shouted. Beaut
came out of the rooms above the bakery and stood in the empty shop.
His mother sat in a chair in her room and trembled. He went to the