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turn a blind eye because they can pay less to a pit girl than they would to a man.”
    “The union is with you,” the miner said. “The lasses are a danger to labor and a threat to the institution of family life.”
    Earnshaw said, “Parliament has twice before tried to chase them from the pits and failed, which has only made the women more brazen. This time we cannot fail. Christ has made this my crusade.”
    Blair looked through slitted lids. Earnshaw’s brows looked electrified, as if Jehovah had anointed him with a lightning bolt. Besides his wiry beard, subsidiary tufts exploded from his nostrils and ears. Blair thought of suggesting butter to train the beard, the way Somali women groomed their hair, but Earnshaw didn’t look receptive to new ideas.
    As afternoon faded the conductor came through the car to turn up the lamps. Earnshaw and the Smallbones perusedtheir Bibles. Blair’s pulse was too rapid for him to sleep, so he opened his knapsack and extracted the envelope Bishop Hannay had given him. He had removed the money before without bothering with the rest of the contents, which consisted of two onionskin pages and a photograph of a rugby team. The pages were written in the meticulous hand of a bookkeeper. Blair glanced at the signature at the end. O. L. Leveret, Hannay’s man. He returned to the beginning.
    I write these words as a friend and confidant of Rev. John Edward Maypole, whose disappearance and continued absence has deprived the Wigan Parish Church and the town of Wigan of a vigorous and earnest spirit.
    As Curate of our Parish Church, Mr. Maypole assisted Rev. Chubb in every regular parish duty, such as services, instruction in the Catechism, Bible School, calls on the sick and poor. On his own, Mr. Maypole gathered the funds and founded the Wigan Home for Single Women Who Have Fallen for the First Time. It was during his work for the Home that he met a soul mate in Bishop Hannay’s daughter, Charlotte. They were engaged to be married this July. She has been inconsolable. Otherwise it is the working class that has most keenly suffered the absence of Mr. Maypole. He was a constant visitor to the poorest households, and although much of his social work was among women, he was a man’s man who could take the rugby field with the brawniest miner, play fair and hold his own.
    I apologize if what follows sounds like the contents of a police blotter. It is merely an attempt to reconstruct John Maypole’s activities on January 18, the last day he was seen. He performed the Morning Service for Rev. Chubb, who was ill, and from then until noon visited convalescents. Dinner for Mr. Maypolewas bread and tea taken at the home of Mary Jaxon, widow. In the afternoon he gave Bible class at the parish school, delivered food to the town workhouse and visited the Home for Women, where he oversaw instruction in nursing and domestic service. By this hour the workday was done. Mr. Maypole spoke to returning miners, inviting them to a social at the Parish rectory the following Saturday. The last person he is known to have invited was Rose Molyneux, a pit girl at the Hannay pit. He was not seen afterward. Since he often took tea alone with a book and had no obligations for the evening, Mr. Maypole may well have concluded what was for him a normal day. Likewise, the following day, because his duties and interests were so wide and various, his absence was not commented on until evening, when Rev. Chubb asked me to visit John’s rooms. I reported that his housekeeper told me that his bed had not been slept in. Inquiries through the police have, since then, proved fruitless.
    It is the desire and expectation of the Parish Church, of the Hannay family and of John’s friends that any questions into his whereabouts be conducted in a manner that ensures that no scandal or public sensation attaches to the modest, Christian life he led.
    O. L. Leveret, Estate Manager, Hannay Hall.
    The photograph was stiffened with