It was written in the autumn of 1909 and after revision, was published in The English Review in July 1911.
Lawrence later included this tale in his collection entitled The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, which Duckworth, his London publisher, bought out on 26 November 1914.
The story concerns Elizabeth Bates, a coal miner's wife.
She angrily waits for her alcoholic husband to come home from the mine, but suspects that he is at the pub getting drunk.
Elizabeth's neighbour runs to the pub, but her husband is nowhere to be found; it is later revealed that he died in an accident in the coal mine earlier that day.