Shirley E-Book

Charlotte Bronte

• Herausgeber: Synapse Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore has introduced labour saving machinery to his Yorkshire mill, arousing a ferment of unemployment and discontent among his workers. Robert considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar to solve his financial woes, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline, who, bored and desperate, lives as a dependent in her uncle's home with no prospect of a career. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Robert's brother, an impoverished tutor - a match opposed by her family. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled? Set during the Napoleonic wars at a time of national economic struggles, Shirley is an unsentimental, yet passionate depiction of conflict between classes, sexes and generations.
Complete edition with an interactive table of contents.

Leseprobe

SHIRLEY

Charlotte Brontë

© 2019 Synapse Publishing

By the Brontë sisters in Synapse catalogue:

The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall

Wuthering Heights

The professor

Agnes Grey

Villette

Jane Eyre

CHAPTER I.

LEVITICAL.

Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more

of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing

a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we

are going back to the beginning of this century: late years--present

years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it

in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.

If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is

preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you

anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion,

and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a

lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you;

something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with

the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It

is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the

exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is

resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a

Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in

Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall

be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.

Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the

north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent

rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral

Aid--no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to

worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to

pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present

successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the

Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or

undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You

could not have guessed by looking at any one of them that the

Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a

preordained, specially-sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or

St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long

night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to

exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its

old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like

raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk.

Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious

plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain favoured district in

the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron blossoming

within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into

this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the

little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to

you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield;

Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being

the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne has kindly

invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party,

see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present,

however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.

These gentlemen are in the bloom of youth; they possess all the activity

of that interesting age--an activity which their moping old vicars would

fain turn into the channel of their pastoral duties, often expressing a

wish to see it expended in a diligent superintendence of the schools,

and in frequent visits to the sick of their respective parishes. But the

youthful Levites feel this to be dull work; they prefer lavishing their

energies on a course of proceeding which, though to other eyes it appear

more heavy with _ennui_, more cursed with monotony, than the toil of

the weaver at his loom, seems to yield them an unfailing supply of

enjoyment and occupation.

I allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst themselves, to and

from their respective lodgings--not a round, but a triangle of visits,

which they keep up all the year through, in winter, spring, summer, and

autumn. Season and weather make no difference; with unintelligible zeal

they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine,

or drink tea, or sup with each other. What attracts them it would be

difficult to say. It is not friendship, for whenever they meet they

quarrel. It is not religion--the thing is never named amongst them;

theology they may discuss occasionally, but piety--never. It is not the

love of eating and drinking: each might have as good a joint and

pudding, tea as potent, and toast as succulent, at his own lodgings, as

is served to him at his brother's. Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs.

Whipp--their respective landladies--affirm that "it is just for naught

else but to give folk trouble." By "folk" the good ladies of course mean

themselves, for indeed they are kept in a continual "fry" by this system

of mutual invasion.

Mr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner; Mrs. Gale waits

on them, but a spark of the hot kitchen fire is in her eye. She

considers that the privilege of inviting a friend to a meal

occasionally, without additional charge (a privilege included in the

terms on which she lets her lodgings), has been quite sufficiently

exercised of late. The present week is yet but at Thursday, and on

Monday Mr. Malone, the curate of Briarfield, came to breakfast and

stayed dinner; on Tuesday Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely came to

tea, remained to supper, occupied the spare bed, and favoured her with

their company to breakfast on Wednesday morning; now, on Thursday, they

are both here at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all

night. "C'en est trop," she would say, if she could speak French.

Mr. Sweeting is mincing the slice of roast beef on his plate, and

complaining that it is very tough; Mr. Donne says the beer is flat. Ay,

that is the worst of it: if they would only be civil Mrs. Gale wouldn't

mind it so much, if they would only seem satisfied with what they get

she wouldn't care; but "these young parsons is so high and so scornful,

they set everybody beneath their 'fit.' They treat her with less than

civility, just because she doesn't keep a servant, but does the work of

the house herself, as her mother did afore her; then they are always

speaking against Yorkshire ways and Yorkshire folk," and by that very

token Mrs. Gale does not believe one of them to be a real gentleman, or

come of gentle kin. "The old parsons is worth the whole lump of college

lads; they know what belongs to good manners, and is kind to high and

low."

"More bread!" cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, though prolonged but to

utter two syllables, proclaims him at once a native of the land of

shamrocks and potatoes. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of

the other two; but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built

personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely

national--not the Milesian face, not Daniel O'Connell's style, but the

high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a

certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look,

better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves than to the landlord

of a free peasantry. Mr. Malone's father termed himself a gentleman: he

was poor and in debt, and besottedly arrogant; and his son was like him.

Mrs. Gale offered the loaf.

"Cut it, woman," said her guest; and the "woman" cut it accordingly. Had

she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the parson also; her

Yorkshire soul revolted absolutely from his manner of command.

The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was "tough," they

ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of

the "flat beer," while a dish of Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of

vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too,

received distinguished marks of their attention; and a "spice-cake,"

which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no

more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's

son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion

thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted

up his voice and wept sore.

The curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine, a liquor of

unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much

rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep

the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on

philosophy, nor on literature--these topics were now, as ever, totally

without interest for them--not even on theology, practical or doctrinal,

but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which

seemed empty as bubbles to all save themselves. Mr. Malone, who

contrived to secure two glasses of wine, when his brethren contented

themselves with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion; that

is, he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring tone, and

laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy.

Each of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone had a stock of

jokes at their service, which he was accustomed to serve out regularly

on convivial occasions like the present, seldom varying his wit; for

which, indeed, there was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider

himself monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought. Mr.

Donne he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to

his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate

surtout which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained

or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney

phrases and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own property, and

certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they

communicated to his style.

Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere

boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on

his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a

seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as "the

ladies' pet;" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr.

Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough

now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose

anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.

The victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a

stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his

otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference

of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity

to maintain.

When Malone's raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did,

they joined, in an attempt to turn the tables on him by asking him how

many boys had shouted "Irish Peter!" after him as he came along the road

that day (Malone's name was Peter--the Rev. Peter Augustus Malone);

requesting to be informed whether it was the mode in Ireland for

clergymen to carry loaded pistols in their pockets, and a shillelah in

their hands, when they made pastoral visits; inquiring the signification

of such words as vele, firrum, hellum, storrum (so Mr. Malone invariably

pronounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing such other methods of

retaliation as the innate refinement of their minds suggested.

This, of course, would not do. Malone, being neither good-natured nor

phlegmatic, was presently in a towering passion. He vociferated,

gesticulated; Donne and Sweeting laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and

snobs at the very top pitch of his high Celtic voice; they taunted him

with being the native of a conquered land. He menaced rebellion in the

name of his "counthry," vented bitter hatred against English rule; they

spoke of rags, beggary, and pestilence. The little parlour was in an

uproar; you would have thought a duel must follow such virulent abuse;

it seemed a wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not take alarm at the

noise, and send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were

accustomed to such demonstrations; they well knew that the curates never

dined or took tea together without a little exercise of the sort, and

were quite easy as to consequences, knowing that these clerical quarrels

were as harmless as they were noisy, that they resulted in nothing, and

that, on whatever terms the curates might part to-night, they would be

sure to meet the best friends in the world to-morrow morning.

As the worthy pair were sitting by their kitchen fire, listening to the

repeated and sonorous contact of Malone's fist with the mahogany plane

of the parlour table, and to the consequent start and jingle of

decanters and glasses following each assault, to the mocking laughter of

the allied English disputants, and the stuttering declamation of the

isolated Hibernian--as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the outer

door-step, and the knocker quivered to a sharp appeal.

Mr. Gale went and opened.

"Whom have you upstairs in the parlour?" asked a voice--a rather

remarkable voice, nasal in tone, abrupt in utterance.

"O Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir? I could hardly see you for the

darkness; it is so soon dark now. Will you walk in, sir?"

"I want to know first whether it is worth my while walking in. Whom have

you upstairs?"

"The curates, sir."

"What! all of them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Been dining here?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do."

With these words a person entered--a middle-aged man, in black. He

walked straight across the kitchen to an inner door, opened it, inclined

his head forward, and stood listening. There was something to listen to,

for the noise above was just then louder than ever.

"Hey!" he ejaculated to himself; then turning to Mr. Gale--"Have you

often this sort of work?"

Mr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent to the clergy.

"They're young, you know, sir--they're young," said he deprecatingly.

"Young! They want caning. Bad boys--bad boys! And if you were a

Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good Churchman, they'd do the

like--they'd expose themselves; but I'll----"

By way of finish to this sentence, he passed through the inner door,

drew it after him, and mounted the stair. Again he listened a few

minutes when he arrived at the upper room. Making entrance without

warning, he stood before the curates.

And they were silent; they were transfixed; and so was the invader.

He--a personage short of stature, but straight of port, and bearing on

broad shoulders a hawk's head, beak, and eye, the whole surmounted by a

Rehoboam, or shovel hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to

lift or remove before the presence in which he then stood--_he_ folded

his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends, if friends they

were, much at his leisure.

"What!" he began, delivering his words in a voice no longer nasal, but

deep--more than deep--a voice made purposely hollow and

cavernous--"what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the

cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the

whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action:

Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in

Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in

Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews

and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; every one of these must have had

its representative in this room two minutes since."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone," began Mr. Donne; "take a seat, pray,

sir. Have a glass of wine?"

His civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat

proceeded,--

"What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the

chapter, and book, and Testament--gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the

city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the

confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. _You_,

apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish

masons--neither more nor less!"

"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a

glass of wine after a friendly dinner--settling the Dissenters!"

"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the

Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles.

You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise--you three

alone--as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers

are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the

thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is.--It is yours, Malone."

"Mine, sir?"

"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be

quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had

left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here.

The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain

district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace

on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred

institution of which they are merely the humble appendages."

There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman's manner of

rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity

most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a

ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat,

black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his

subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith.

Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed

their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the

features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.

"I met Supplehough," he continued, "plodding through the mud this wet

night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I

heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a

possessed bull; and I find _you_, gentlemen, tarrying over your

half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No

wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a

day--which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and

hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers

and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden

brim of his tub; as little wonder that _you_, when you are left to

yourselves, without your rectors--myself, and Hall, and Boultby--to back

you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare

walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the

organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see

Malone.--I have an errand unto thee, O captain!"

"What is it?" inquired Malone discontentedly. "There can be no funeral

to take at this time of day."

"Have you any arms about you?"

"Arms, sir?--yes, and legs." And he advanced the mighty members.

"Bah! weapons I mean."

"I have the pistols you gave me yourself. I never part with them. I lay

them ready cocked on a chair by my bedside at night. I have my

blackthorn."

"Very good. Will you go to Hollow's Mill?"

"What is stirring at Hollow's Mill?"

"Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has

sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro'; there are only two women

left about the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his

well-wishers to pay him a visit, if they knew how straight the path was

made before them."

"I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don't care for him."

"Soh! Malone, you are afraid."

"You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance

of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never

pretend to understand; and for the sake of his sweet company only I

would not stir a step."

"But there _is_ a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take

place--of which, indeed, I see no signs--yet it is unlikely this night

will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have new

machinery, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from

Stilbro' this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men are

gone to fetch them."

"They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir."

"Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must

have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I

call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters

unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the

hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were

the darling of the neighbourhood, or--being, as he is, its

detestation--bore a 'charmed life,' as they say in tale-books. He takes

no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage--shot,

one in his own house and the other on the moor."

"But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too," interposed

Mr. Sweeting; "and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other

day."

"What did you hear, Davy?"

"You know Mike Hartley, sir?"

"The Antinomian weaver? Yes."

"When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally

winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his

mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his

doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting

in outer darkness."

"Well, that has nothing to do with Moore."

"Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller,

sir."

"I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide.

Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going

over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, 'the revenger of blood has

obtained satisfaction.' The fellow exults strangely in murder done on

crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already

heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is

that what you allude to, Sweeting?"

"You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal

hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after

him, but he has a _hankering_ that Moore should be made an example of.

He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with

the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore

should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike

Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?" inquired Sweeting simply.

"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or

perhaps a little of both."

"He talks of seeing visions, sir."

"Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was

going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to

him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon."

"Tell it, sir. What was it?" urged Sweeting.

"Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Malone, you

see, has none. Neither murders nor visions interest him. See what a big

vacant Saph he looks at this moment."

"Saph! Who was Saph, sir?"

"I thought you would not know. You may find it out. It is biblical. I

know nothing more of him than his name and race; but from a boy upwards

I have always attached a personality to Saph. Depend on it he was

honest, heavy, and luckless. He met his end at Gob by the hand of

Sibbechai."

"But the vision, sir?"

"Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and Malone yawning,

so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out of work, like many others,

unfortunately. Mr. Grame, Sir Philip Nunnely's steward, gave him a job

about the priory. According to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather

late in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he thought

was a band at a distance--bugles, fifes, and the sound of a trumpet; it

came from the forest, and he wondered that there should be music there.

He looked up. All amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red, like

poppies, or white, like may-blossom. The wood was full of them; they

poured out and filled the park. He then perceived they were

soldiers--thousands and tens of thousands; but they made no more noise

than a swarm of midges on a summer evening. They formed in order, he

affirmed, and marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He

followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and

distant. On the common he watched them go through a number of

evolutions. A man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and directed

them. They extended, he declared, over fifty acres. They were in sight

half an hour; then they marched away quite silently. The whole time he

heard neither voice nor tread--nothing but the faint music playing a

solemn march."

"Where did they go, sir?"

"Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them. They seemed passing Fieldhead,

when a column of smoke, such as might be vomited by a park of artillery,

spread noiseless over the fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he

said, blue and dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again

for the soldiers, but they were vanished; he saw them no more. Mike,

like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed the vision but gave the

interpretation thereof. It signifies, he intimated, bloodshed and civil

conflict."

"Do you credit it, sir?" asked Sweeting.

"Do you, Davy?--But come, Malone; why are you not off?"

"I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore yourself. You

like this kind of thing."

"So I should have done, had I not unfortunately happened to engage

Boultby to sup with me on his way home from the Bible Society meeting at

Nunnely. I promised to send you as my substitute; for which, by-the-bye,

he did not thank me. He would much rather have had me than you, Peter.

Should there be any real need of help I shall join you. The mill-bell

will give warning. Meantime, go--unless (turning suddenly to Messrs.

Sweeting and Donne)--unless Davy Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers

going.--What do you say, gentlemen? The commission is an honourable one,

not without the seasoning of a little real peril; for the country is in

a queer state, as you all know, and Moore and his mill and his machinery

are held in sufficient odium. There are chivalric sentiments, there is

high-beating courage, under those waistcoats of yours, I doubt not.

Perhaps I am too partial to my favourite Peter. Little David shall be

the champion, or spotless Joseph.--Malone, you are but a great

floundering Saul after all, good only to lend your armour. Out with your

firearms; fetch your shillelah. It is there--in the corner."

With a significant grin Malone produced his pistols, offering one to

each of his brethren. They were not readily seized on. With graceful

modesty each gentleman retired a step from the presented weapon.

"I never touch them. I never did touch anything of the kind," said Mr.

Donne.

"I am almost a stranger to Mr. Moore," murmured Sweeting.

"If you never touched a pistol, try the feel of it now, great satrap of

Egypt. As to the little minstrel, he probably prefers encountering the

Philistines with no other weapon than his flute.--Get their hats, Peter.

They'll both of 'em go."

"No, sir; no, Mr. Helstone. My mother wouldn't like it," pleaded

Sweeting.

"And I make it a rule never to get mixed up in affairs of the kind,"

observed Donne.

Helstone smiled sardonically; Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He then

replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, and saying that "he never

felt more in tune for a shindy in his life, and that he wished a score

of greasy cloth-dressers might beat up Moore's quarters that night," he

made his exit, clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the

house shake with the bang of the front-door behind him.

CHAPTER II.

THE WAGONS.

The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in gray

rain-clouds--gray they would have been by day; by night they looked

sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her

changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles

on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of

earth and heaven--never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, making

them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding

their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He

did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared--a

muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the

furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the

horizon--with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not

trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were

gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which

those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser

element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his

way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the

back of his head, as his Irish manner was. "Tramp, tramp," he went along

the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an

accommodation; "splash, splash," through the mire-filled cart ruts,

where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain

landmarks--the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of

Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire

through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table,

and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate

from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water.

In a strange place he would instantly have realized the dream; but the

company assembled in that kitchen were Mr. Helstone's own parishioners;

they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.

The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to

Hollow's Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across

fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct

course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building

here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could

see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick,

lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark;

not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; the rain

running from the eaves, and the rather wild but very low whistle of the

wind round the chimneys and through the boughs were the sole sounds in

its neighbourhood.

This building passed, the fields, hitherto flat, declined in a rapid

descent. Evidently a vale lay below, through which you could hear the

water run. One light glimmered in the depth. For that beacon Malone

steered.

He came to a little white house--you could see it was white even through

this dense darkness--and knocked at the door. A fresh-faced servant

opened it. By the candle she held was revealed a narrow passage,

terminating in a narrow stair. Two doors covered with crimson baize, a

strip of crimson carpet down the steps, contrasted with light-coloured

walls and white floor, made the little interior look clean and fresh.

"Mr. Moore is at home, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir, but he is not in."

"Not in! Where is he then?"

"At the mill--in the counting-house."

Here one of the crimson doors opened.

"Are the wagons come, Sarah?" asked a female voice, and a female head at

the same time was apparent. It might not be the head of a

goddess--indeed a screw of curl-paper on each side the temples quite

forbade that supposition--but neither was it the head of a Gorgon; yet

Malone seemed to take it in the latter light. Big as he was, he shrank

bashfully back into the rain at the view thereof, and saying, "I'll go

to him," hurried in seeming trepidation down a short lane, across an

obscure yard, towards a huge black mill.

The work-hours were over; the "hands" were gone. The machinery was at

rest, the mill shut up. Malone walked round it. Somewhere in its great

sooty flank he found another chink of light; he knocked at another

door, using for the purpose the thick end of his shillelah, with which

he beat a rousing tattoo. A key turned; the door unclosed.

"Is it Joe Scott? What news of the wagons, Joe?"

"No; it's myself. Mr. Helstone would send me."

"Oh! Mr. Malone." The voice in uttering this name had the slightest

possible cadence of disappointment. After a moment's pause it continued,

politely but a little formally,--

"I beg you will come in, Mr. Malone. I regret extremely Mr. Helstone

should have thought it necessary to trouble you so far. There was no

necessity--I told him so--and on such a night; but walk forwards."

Through a dark apartment, of aspect undistinguishable, Malone followed

the speaker into a light and bright room within--very light and bright

indeed it seemed to eyes which, for the last hour, had been striving to

penetrate the double darkness of night and fog; but except for its

excellent fire, and for a lamp of elegant design and vivid lustre

burning on a table, it was a very plain place. The boarded floor was

carpetless; the three or four stiff-backed, green-painted chairs seemed

once to have furnished the kitchen of some farm-house; a desk of strong,

solid formation, the table aforesaid, and some framed sheets on the

stone-coloured walls, bearing plans for building, for gardening, designs

of machinery, etc., completed the furniture of the place.

Plain as it was, it seemed to satisfy Malone, who, when he had removed

and hung up his wet surtout and hat, drew one of the rheumatic-looking

chairs to the hearth, and set his knees almost within the bars of the

red grate.

"Comfortable quarters you have here, Mr. Moore; and all snug to

yourself."

"Yes, but my sister would be glad to see you, if you would prefer

stepping into the house."

"Oh no! The ladies are best alone, I never was a lady's man. You don't

mistake me for my friend Sweeting, do you, Mr. Moore?"

"Sweeting! Which of them is that? The gentleman in the chocolate

overcoat, or the little gentleman?"

"The little one--he of Nunnely; the cavalier of the Misses Sykes, with

the whole six of whom he is in love, ha! ha!"

"Better be generally in love with all than specially with one, I should

think, in that quarter."

"But he is specially in love with one besides, for when I and Donne

urged him to make a choice amongst the fair bevy, he named--which do you

think?"

With a queer, quiet smile Mr. Moore replied, "Dora, of course, or

Harriet."

"Ha! ha! you've an excellent guess. But what made you hit on those two?"

"Because they are the tallest, the handsomest, and Dora, at least, is

the stoutest; and as your friend Mr. Sweeting is but a little slight

figure, I concluded that, according to a frequent rule in such cases, he

preferred his contrast."

"You are right; Dora it is. But he has no chance, has he, Moore?"

"What has Mr. Sweeting besides his curacy?"

This question seemed to tickle Malone amazingly. He laughed for full

three minutes before he answered it.

"What has Sweeting? Why, David has his harp, or flute, which comes to

the same thing. He has a sort of pinchbeck watch; ditto, ring; ditto,

eyeglass. That's what he has."

"How would he propose to keep Miss Sykes in gowns only?"

"Ha! ha! Excellent! I'll ask him that next time I see him. I'll roast

him for his presumption. But no doubt he expects old Christopher Sykes

would do something handsome. He is rich, is he not? They live in a large

house."

"Sykes carries on an extensive concern."

"Therefore he must be wealthy, eh?"

"Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth, and in these times

would be about as likely to think of drawing money from the business to

give dowries to his daughters as I should be to dream of pulling down

the cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large as

Fieldhead."

"Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day?"

"No. Perhaps that I _was_ about to effect some such change. Your

Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that or sillier things."

"That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease (I thought it looked a

dismal place, by-the-bye, to-night, as I passed it), and that it was

your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress--to be married,

in short, ha! ha! Now, which is it? Dora, I am sure. You said she was

the handsomest."

"I wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be married since I

came to Briarfield. They have assigned me every marriageable single

woman by turns in the district. Now it was the two Misses Wynns--first

the dark, then the light one; now the red-haired Miss Armitage; then the

mature Ann Pearson. At present you throw on my shoulders all the tribe

of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests God knows. I

visit nowhere; I seek female society about as assiduously as you do, Mr.

Malone. If ever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a

call in their counting-house, where our discussions run on other topics

than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than

courtships, establishments, dowries. The cloth we can't sell, the hands

we can't employ, the mills we can't run, the perverse course of events

generally, which we cannot alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty

well at present, to the tolerably complete exclusion of such figments as

love-making, etc."

"I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one notion I hate

more than another, it is that of marriage--I mean marriage in the vulgar

weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment--two beggarly fools agreeing

to unite their indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling. Humbug! But

an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in consonance with

dignity of views and permanency of solid interests, is not so bad--eh?"

"No," responded Moore, in an absent manner. The subject seemed to have

no interest for him; he did not pursue it. After sitting for some time

gazing at the fire with a preoccupied air, he suddenly turned his head.

"Hark!" said he. "Did you hear wheels?"

Rising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. He soon closed

it. "It is only the sound of the wind rising," he remarked, "and the

rivulet a little swollen, rushing down the hollow. I expected those

wagons at six; it is near nine now."

"Seriously, do you suppose that the putting up of this new machinery

will bring you into danger?" inquired Malone. "Helstone seems to think

it will."

"I only wish the machines--the frames--were safe here, and lodged within

the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy the frame-breakers. Let them

only pay me a visit and take the consequences. My mill is my castle."

"One despises such low scoundrels," observed Malone, in a profound vein

of reflection. "I almost wish a party would call upon you to-night; but

the road seemed extremely quiet as I came along. I saw nothing astir."

"You came by the Redhouse?"

"Yes."

"There would be nothing on that road. It is in the direction of Stilbro'

the risk lies."

"And you think there is risk?"

"What these fellows have done to others they may do to me. There is only

this difference: most of the manufacturers seem paralyzed when they are

attacked. Sykes, for instance, when his dressing-shop was set on fire

and burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his tenters and

left in shreds in the field, took no steps to discover or punish the

miscreants: he gave up as tamely as a rabbit under the jaws of a ferret.

Now I, if I know myself, should stand by my trade, my mill, and my

machinery."

"Helstone says these three are your gods; that the 'Orders in Council'

are with you another name for the seven deadly sins; that Castlereagh is

your Antichrist, and the war-party his legions."

"Yes; I abhor all these things because they ruin me. They stand in my

way. I cannot get on. I cannot execute my plans because of them. I see

myself baffled at every turn by their untoward effects."

"But you are rich and thriving, Moore?"

"I am very rich in cloth I cannot sell. You should step into my

warehouse yonder, and observe how it is piled to the roof with pieces.

Roakes and Pearson are in the same condition. America used to be their

market, but the Orders in Council have cut that off."

Malone did not seem prepared to carry on briskly a conversation of this

sort. He began to knock the heels of his boots together, and to yawn.

"And then to think," continued Mr. Moore who seemed too much taken up

with the current of his own thoughts to note the symptoms of his guest's

_ennui_--"to think that these ridiculous gossips of Whinbury and

Briarfield will keep pestering one about being married! As if there was

nothing to be done in life but to 'pay attention,' as they say, to some

young lady, and then to go to church with her, and then to start on a

bridal tour, and then to run through a round of visits, and then, I

suppose, to be 'having a family.' Oh, que le diable emporte!" He broke

off the aspiration into which he was launching with a certain energy,

and added, more calmly, "I believe women talk and think only of these

things, and they naturally fancy men's minds similarly occupied."

"Of course--of course," assented Malone; "but never mind them." And he

whistled, looked impatiently round, and seemed to feel a great want of

something. This time Moore caught and, it appeared, comprehended his

demonstrations.

"Mr. Malone," said he, "you must require refreshment after your wet

walk. I forget hospitality."

"Not at all," rejoined Malone; but he looked as if the right nail was at

last hit on the head, nevertheless. Moore rose and opened a cupboard.

"It is my fancy," said he, "to have every convenience within myself, and

not to be dependent on the feminity in the cottage yonder for every

mouthful I eat or every drop I drink. I often spend the evening and sup

here alone, and sleep with Joe Scott in the mill. Sometimes I am my own

watchman. I require little sleep, and it pleases me on a fine night to

wander for an hour or two with my musket about the hollow. Mr. Malone,

can you cook a mutton chop?"

"Try me. I've done it hundreds of times at college."

"There's a dishful, then, and there's the gridiron. Turn them quickly.

You know the secret of keeping the juices in?"

"Never fear me; you shall see. Hand a knife and fork, please."

The curate turned up his coat-cuffs, and applied himself to the cookery

with vigour. The manufacturer placed on the table plates, a loaf of

bread, a black bottle, and two tumblers. He then produced a small copper

kettle--still from the same well-stored recess, his cupboard--filled it

with water from a large stone jar in a corner, set it on the fire beside

the hissing gridiron, got lemons, sugar, and a small china punch-bowl;

but while he was brewing the punch a tap at the door called him away.

"Is it you, Sarah?"

"Yes, sir. Will you come to supper, please, sir?"

"No; I shall not be in to-night; I shall sleep in the mill. So lock the

doors, and tell your mistress to go to bed."

He returned.

"You have your household in proper order," observed Malone approvingly,

as, with his fine face ruddy as the embers over which he bent, he

assiduously turned the mutton chops. "You are not under petticoat

government, like poor Sweeting, a man--whew! how the fat spits! it has

burnt my hand--destined to be ruled by women. Now you and I,

Moore--there's a fine brown one for you, and full of gravy--you and I

will have no gray mares in our stables when we marry."

"I don't know; I never think about it. If the gray mare is handsome and

tractable, why not?"

"The chops are done. Is the punch brewed?"

"There is a glassful. Taste it. When Joe Scott and his minions return

they shall have a share of this, provided they bring home the frames

intact."

Malone waxed very exultant over the supper. He laughed aloud at trifles,

made bad jokes and applauded them himself, and, in short, grew

unmeaningly noisy. His host, on the contrary, remained quiet as before.

It is time, reader, that you should have some idea of the appearance of

this same host. I must endeavour to sketch him as he sits at table.

He is what you would probably call, at first view, rather a

strange-looking man; for he is thin, dark, sallow, very foreign of

aspect, with shadowy hair carelessly streaking his forehead. It appears

that he spends but little time at his toilet, or he would arrange it

with more taste. He seems unconscious that his features are fine, that

they have a southern symmetry, clearness, regularity in their

chiselling; nor does a spectator become aware of this advantage till he

has examined him well, for an anxious countenance and a hollow, somewhat

haggard, outline of face disturb the idea of beauty with one of care.

His eyes are large, and grave, and gray; their expression is intent and

meditative, rather searching than soft, rather thoughtful than genial.

When he parts his lips in a smile, his physiognomy is agreeable--not

that it is frank or cheerful even then, but you feel the influence of a

certain sedate charm, suggestive, whether truly or delusively, of a

considerate, perhaps a kind nature, of feelings that may wear well at

home--patient, forbearing, possibly faithful feelings. He is still

young--not more than thirty; his stature is tall, his figure slender.

His manner of speaking displeases. He has an outlandish accent, which,

notwithstanding a studied carelessness of pronunciation and diction,

grates on a British, and especially on a Yorkshire, ear.

Mr. Moore, indeed, was but half a Briton, and scarcely that. He came of

a foreign ancestry by the mother's side, and was himself born and partly

reared on a foreign soil. A hybrid in nature, it is probable he had a

hybrid's feeling on many points--patriotism for one; it is likely that

he was unapt to attach himself to parties, to sects, even to climes and

customs; it is not impossible that he had a tendency to isolate his

individual person from any community amidst which his lot might

temporarily happen to be thrown, and that he felt it to be his best

wisdom to push the interests of Robert Gérard Moore, to the exclusion of

philanthropic consideration for general interests, with which he

regarded the said Gérard Moore as in a great measure disconnected. Trade

was Mr. Moore's hereditary calling: the Gérards of Antwerp had been

merchants for two centuries back. Once they had been wealthy merchants;

but the uncertainties, the involvements, of business had come upon them;

disastrous speculations had loosened by degrees the foundations of their

credit. The house had stood on a tottering base for a dozen years; and

at last, in the shock of the French Revolution, it had rushed down a

total ruin. In its fall was involved the English and Yorkshire firm of

Moore, closely connected with the Antwerp house, and of which one of the

partners, resident in Antwerp, Robert Moore, had married Hortense

Gérard, with the prospect of his bride inheriting her father Constantine

Gérard's share in the business. She inherited, as we have seen, but his

share in the liabilities of the firm; and these liabilities, though duly

set aside by a composition with creditors, some said her son Robert

accepted, in his turn, as a legacy, and that he aspired one day to

discharge them, and to rebuild the fallen house of Gérard and Moore on a

scale at least equal to its former greatness. It was even supposed that

he took by-past circumstances much to heart; and if a childhood passed

at the side of a saturnine mother, under foreboding of coming evil, and

a manhood drenched and blighted by the pitiless descent of the storm,

could painfully impress the mind, _his_ probably was impressed in no

golden characters.

If, however, he had a great end of restoration in view, it was not in

his power to employ great means for its attainment. He was obliged to be

content with the day of small things. When he came to Yorkshire,

he--whose ancestors had owned warehouses in this seaport, and factories

in that inland town, had possessed their town-house and their

country-seat--saw no way open to him but to rent a cloth-mill in an

out-of-the-way nook of an out-of-the-way district; to take a cottage

adjoining it for his residence, and to add to his possessions, as

pasture for his horse, and space for his cloth-tenters, a few acres of

the steep, rugged land that lined the hollow through which his

mill-stream brawled. All this he held at a somewhat high rent (for these

war times were hard, and everything was dear) of the trustees of the

Fieldhead estate, then the property of a minor.

At the time this history commences, Robert Moore had lived but two years

in the district, during which period he had at least proved himself

possessed of the quality of activity. The dingy cottage was converted

into a neat, tasteful residence. Of part of the rough land he had made

garden-ground, which he cultivated with singular, even with Flemish,

exactness and care. As to the mill, which was an old structure, and

fitted up with old machinery, now become inefficient and out of date, he

had from the first evinced the strongest contempt for all its

arrangements and appointments. His aim had been to effect a radical

reform, which he had executed as fast as his very limited capital would

allow; and the narrowness of that capital, and consequent check on his

progress, was a restraint which galled his spirit sorely. Moore ever

wanted to push on. "Forward" was the device stamped upon his soul; but

poverty curbed him. Sometimes (figuratively) he foamed at the mouth when

the reins were drawn very tight.

In this state of feeling, it is not to be expected that he would

deliberate much as to whether his advance was or was not prejudicial to

others. Not being a native, nor for any length of time a resident of the

neighbourhood, he did not sufficiently care when the new inventions

threw the old workpeople out of employ. He never asked himself where

those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread; and in

this negligence he only resembled thousands besides, on whom the

starving poor of Yorkshire seemed to have a closer claim.

The period of which I write was an overshadowed one in British history,

and especially in the history of the northern provinces. War was then

at its height. Europe was all involved therein. England, if not weary,

was worn with long resistance--yes, and half her people were weary too,

and cried out for peace on any terms. National honour was become a mere

empty name, of no value in the eyes of many, because their sight was dim

with famine; and for a morsel of meat they would have sold their

birthright.

The "Orders in Council," provoked by Napoleon's Milan and Berlin

decrees, and forbidding neutral powers to trade with France, had, by

offending America, cut off the principal market of the Yorkshire woollen

trade, and brought it consequently to the verge of ruin. Minor foreign

markets were glutted, and would receive no more. The Brazils, Portugal,

Sicily, were all overstocked by nearly two years' consumption. At this

crisis certain inventions in machinery were introduced into the staple

manufactures of the north, which, greatly reducing the number of hands

necessary to be employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them

without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened.

Distress reached its climax. Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand

of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were

felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual

in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a

manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a

manufacturer's house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the

streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local

measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader

was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper

paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As

to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost

that inheritance--who could not get work, and consequently could not get

wages, and consequently could not get bread--they were left to suffer

on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of

invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war

could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was

no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny--ate the bread

and drank the waters of affliction.

Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they

believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which

contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those

buildings. In the parish of Briarfield, with which we have at present to

do, Hollow's Mill was the place held most abominable; Gérard Moore, in

his double character of semi-foreigner and thorough-going progressist,

the man most abominated. And it perhaps rather agreed with Moore's

temperament than otherwise to be generally hated, especially when he

believed the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient

thing; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on this night,

sat in his counting-house waiting the arrival of his frame-laden wagons.

Malone's coming and company were, it may be, most unwelcome to him. He

would have preferred sitting alone; for he liked a silent, sombre,

unsafe solitude. His watchman's musket would have been company enough

for him; the full-flowing beck in the den would have delivered

continuously the discourse most genial to his ear.

* * * * *

With the queerest look in the world had the manufacturer for some ten

minutes been watching the Irish curate, as the latter made free with the

punch, when suddenly that steady gray eye changed, as if another vision

came between it and Malone. Moore raised his hand.

"Chut!" he said in his French fashion, as Malone made a noise with his

glass. He listened a moment, then rose, put his hat on, and went out at

the counting-house door.

The night was still, dark, and stagnant: the water yet rushed on full

and fast; its flow almost seemed a flood in the utter silence. Moore's

ear, however, caught another sound, very distant but yet dissimilar,

broken and rugged--in short, a sound of heavy wheels crunching a stony

road. He returned to the counting-house and lit a lantern, with which he

walked down the mill-yard, and proceeded to open the gates. The big

wagons were coming on; the dray-horses' huge hoofs were heard splashing

in the mud and water. Moore hailed them.

"Hey, Joe Scott! Is all right?"

Probably Joe Scott was yet at too great a distance to hear the inquiry.

He did not answer it.

"Is all right, I say?" again asked Moore, when the elephant-like

leader's nose almost touched his.

Some one jumped out from the foremost wagon into the road; a voice cried

aloud, "Ay, ay, divil; all's raight! We've smashed 'em."

And there was a run. The wagons stood still; they were now deserted.

"Joe Scott!" No Joe Scott answered. "Murgatroyd! Pighills! Sykes!" No

reply. Mr. Moore lifted his lantern and looked into the vehicles. There

was neither man nor machinery; they were empty and abandoned.

Now Mr. Moore loved his machinery. He had risked the last of his capital

on the purchase of these frames and shears which to-night had been

expected. Speculations most important to his interests depended on the

results to be wrought by them. Where were they?

The words "we've smashed 'em" rang in his ears. How did the catastrophe

affect him? By the light of the lantern he held were his features

visible, relaxing to a singular smile--the smile the man of determined

spirit wears when he reaches a juncture in his life where this

determined spirit is to feel a demand on its strength, when the strain

is to be made, and the faculty must bear or break. Yet he remained

silent, and even motionless; for at the instant he neither knew what to

say nor what to do. He placed the lantern on the ground, and stood with

his arms folded, gazing down and reflecting.

An impatient trampling of one of the horses made him presently look up.

His eye in the moment caught the gleam of something white attached to a

part of the harness. Examined by the light of the lantern this proved to

be a folded paper--a billet. It bore no address without; within was the

superscription:--

"To the Divil of Hollow's Miln."

We will not copy the rest of the orthography, which was very peculiar,

but translate it into legible English. It ran thus:--

"Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on Stilbro' Moor, and your

men are lying bound hand and foot in a ditch by the roadside. Take this

as a warning from men that are starving, and have starving wives and

children to go home to when they have done this deed. If you get new

machines, or if you otherwise go on as you have done, you shall hear

from us again. Beware!"

"Hear from you again? Yes, I'll hear from you again, and you shall hear

from me. I'll speak to you directly. On Stilbro' Moor you shall hear

from me in a moment."

Having led the wagons within the gates, he hastened towards the cottage.

Opening the door, he spoke a few words quickly but quietly to two

females who ran to meet him in the passage. He calmed the seeming alarm

of one by a brief palliative account of what had taken place; to the

other he said, "Go into the mill, Sarah--there is the key--and ring the

mill-bell as loud as you can. Afterwards you will get another lantern

and help me to light up the front."

Returning to his horses, he unharnessed, fed, and stabled them with

equal speed and care, pausing occasionally, while so occupied, as if to

listen for the mill-bell. It clanged out presently, with irregular but

loud and alarming din. The hurried, agitated peal seemed more urgent

than if the summons had been steadily given by a practised hand. On that

still night, at that unusual hour, it was heard a long way round. The

guests in the kitchen of the Redhouse were startled by the clamour, and