‘Jim Smith came asking for work a couple of years ago. I think he’d done the rounds of most of the mills and factories and been turned away from all of them. He was barely twelve but said he was fifteen. Just a little scrap, he was. He’d left the workhouse after his mother died. He would have been set to work anyway when he reached twelve, but he told me he wanted to make his own way so that his mother would have been proud of him had she lived.’

He gave a little grunt. ‘I took him on because he reminded me of my youngest sister; she was nearest to me in our family and died of tuberculosis when she was twelve. He had the same dark hair and blue eyes, and had a vulnerable expression about him, just as she had.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, I told him he could look after the horses until he was old enough to start work in the mill.

‘And then about a year later this other lad turned up, and Jim asked if I’d give him a job too, because he hadn’t got anybody either and they’d been like brothers when they were in the workhouse. I said no, because he was far too young to work for me, maybe eight or nine, and besides, he seemed a shrewd little fellow and I thought he might get into mischief. Turned out I was right on that score, because although he went back to the workhouse he would turn up from time to time and nag Jim to ask me to give him work, and I always said no.’

‘Was he the boy who died?’ Ellen whispered the question, and Tannerson nodded.

‘I don’t know if Jim let him into the mill or if he found his way in by himself, but he was there that night. It was bitterly cold, if you remember, and someone had closed the vents from the inside; that was why the heat in the grain had built up until it only needed a spark from Jim’s lamp to explode.’ He shook his head and took a deep breath. ‘Poor lads.’

‘No use blaming yourself, Mr Tannerson,’ Ellen said, for she could hear the regret in his voice. ‘Benny must have crept inside to keep warm, or mebbe Jim had left the doors unlocked for him.’

‘I think so.’ He pulled up outside Ellen’s house. ‘But it’s a terrible indictment on society when a child has to choose between living in a workhouse or on the streets.’

‘It is,’ she said softly. ‘But you saved one child at least; you can’t save them all.’