Frank Oldfield

A boy's temperance pledge becomes a source of conflict in the Lancashire mining village of Langhurst. Fourteen-year-old Samuel Johnson and his younger sister Betty have seen their wages spent on drink while their own food and clothing are neglected. After both sign a promise to abstain, their father angrily demands that they abandon it. The novel opens with Samuel's mother searching for him after he leaves home, having placed a coin, a lock of hair and a note for her on the table.

Theodore P. Wilson builds this Christian story for young readers around family hardship, loyalty between siblings and the pressure to surrender a conviction. Colliery work, factory employment and village meetings give its moral arguments a concrete social setting. Dialect dialogue carries the fears and disagreements of the household. Readers interested in temperance fiction can see how religious teaching and working families' daily struggles are brought together in a story of conscience.