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"I wish the Kinlochleven navvies had been thrown into the loch. They would fain turn the Highlands into a cinderheap," said the late Andrew Lang, writing to me a few months before his death.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to tell of the navvy; the life he leads, the dangers he dares, and the death he often dies. Most of my story is autobiographical. Moleskin Joe and Carroty Dan are true to life; they live now, and for all I know to the contrary may be met with on some precarious job, in some evil-smelling model lodging-house, or, as suits these gipsies of labour, on the open road. Norah Ryan's painful story shows the dangers to which an innocent girl is exposed through ignorance of the fundamental facts of existence; Gourock Ellen and Annie are types of women whom I have often met. While asking a little allowance for the pen of the novelist it must be said that nearly all the incidents of the book have come under the observation of the writer: that such incidents should take place makes the tragedy of the story.

Patrick MacGill.

The Garden House,

Windsor.

January, 1914.

CHILDREN

OF

THE

DEAD

END

CHILDREN OF

THE DEAD END