CHAPTER XI

THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN Joe Burt had been born at Rochdale of a mother whose favourite saying was: "With a rocking-chair and a piece o celery a Lancasheer lass is aw reet." At eight, she had entered the mill, doffing. Joe had entered the same mill at about the same age, doffing too. He worked bare-footed in the ring-room in the days when overlookers and jobbers carried straps and used them. When he was fifteen his mother died, and his father married again. "Thoo can fend for self," his step-mother told him stra…