Through The Fray: A Tale Of The Luddite Riots

" He knows it," the old woman said nodding. " When I says a thing I mean it. So he had best pay up."

When Ripon met Ned next day he said: " I talked to her last night. Mather paid her five shillings, and she has told him if he doesn't pay her the other five by

Saturday she will speak to Porson; so I think the best plan is to wait till then and see what comes of it. She will tell the whole story and Porson will learn it without our interference, and can think what he likes about it."

Relieved in mind at finding that there was a prospect of his avoiding the decision whether or not to inform the master of his suspicions, Ned went to his desk. When afternoon school began Mr. Porson said gravely:

" Boys, when you came back from the field did you all go straight to the washing-room to wash your hands before dinner?"

There was a chorus of surprised assent.

" I am sorry to tell you that another theft has been committed. A gold pencil-case has disappeared from my study table. I was using it after school. I left it on the table when I went for a stroll before dinner. I remember most distinctly laying it down among the pens. I went into my study ten minutes ago, and wanting to make a note as to this afternoon's work looked for the pencil and it was gone. The window was open as usual, and it is possible that tramps passing along the road may have come into the garden and have got in at the window. As in the case of the book I suspect no one, but two such occurrences as these are very uncomfortable for us all. I shall not propose any search this time, for had any of you taken it, which I cannot for a moment believe, he would not have been careless enough to put it in his pocket, or conceal it in his desk or boxes, but would have stowed it away somewhere where there would be no

chance whatever of its being found. Now let us dismiss the subject and go on with our lessons."

While the master was speaking Ripon and Sankey had glanced for a moment at each other; the same thought was in both their minds. After school was over they joined each other in the yard.

"Was Mather in the washing-room with the others?" Sankey asked eagerly.

" He was, but he came up last," Ripon replied. " You know he generally saunters along in a lazy way and is the last to get in. So he was to-day, but I don't know that he was later than usual."

" I think, Ripon, we ought to speak to Porson."

"I think so too/' Ripon rejoined gravely; "it is too serious to keep to ourselves. Any ordinary thing I would not peach about on any account, but a disgraceful theft like this, which throws a doubt over us all, is another thing; the honour of the whole school is at stake. I have been thinking it over. I don't want Mather to suspect anything, so I will go out at the back gate with you, as if I was going to walk part of the way home with you, and then we will go round to the front door and speak to Porson."

The master was sitting on a low seat in the window of his study. Hearing footsteps coming up from the front gate he looked round.

" Do you want to speak to me, boys?" he asked in some surprise through the open window. " What makes you come round the front way?"

" We want to see you privately, sir," Ripon said.

" Very well, boys, I will open the door for you. Now, what is it?" he asked as the boys followed him into the study.

" Well, sir, it may be nothing, I am sure I hope so," Ripon said; "but Sankey and I thought you ought to know and then it will be off our minds, and you can do as you like about it. Now, Sankey, tell what you know first, then I will tell what Mother Brown said to me on Wednesday."

Ned told the story in the same words in which he had related it to Ripon; and Ripon then detailed his conversation with the cake-woman, and her threats of reporting Mather on Saturday were the debt not paid. Ned had already given his reason for keeping silence in the matter hitherto, and Ripon now explained that they had determined to wait till Saturday to see what came of it, but that after that new theft they deemed it their duty to speak at once. Mr. Porson sat with his face half shaded with his hand and without speaking a single word until the boys had concluded.

" It is a sad business," he said in a low tone, " a very sad business. It is still possible that you may have come to false conclusions; but the circumstances you have related are terribly strong. I am grieved, indeed, over the business, and would rather have lost a hundred books and pencil-cases than it should have happened. You have done quite right, boys; I am greatly obliged to you both, and you have acted very well. I know how painful it

must be to you both to have been obliged to bring so grave a matter to my ears. Thank you; I will consider what is the best course to adopt. If it can be avoided, I shall so arrange that your names do not appear in the matter."

For some little time after the boys had left him Mr-Porson remained in deep thought; then he rose, put on his hat, and went out, first inquiring of the servant if she knew where the woman who sold cakes to the boys lived.

"Yes, sir; she lives in a little house in Mill Street; it's not a regular shop, but there are a few cakes in one of the windows; I have bought things there for the kitchen, knowing that she dealt with the young gentlemen."

Mr. Porson made his way to Mill Street and easily found the house he was in search of. On being questioned the old woman at first showed some reluctance in answering his questions, but Mr. Porson said sharply:

" Now, dame, I want no nonsense; I am acquainted with the whole affair, but wish to have it from your own lips. Unless you tell me the whole truth not a cake will you sell my boys in future."

Thus pressed Mrs. Brown at once related the story of Mather having borrowed some money of her; of her threats to report him unless he paid, and of his having given her five shillings on the following Saturday, saying that he would give her the rest in a few days but could pay no more then; and how, after repeated disappointments, she had now given him till Saturday to settle the debt.

" If he didn't pay, sir, I meant to have come to ye and telled ye all about it, for I hate lies, and Master Mather has lied to me over and over again about it; but seeing that Saturday hasn't come I don't like telling ye the story, as he may have meant to keep his word to me this time."

" Here are the five shillings which he borrowed of you; as to the other money, you will never get it, and I hope it will be a lesson to you; and mind, if I find that you ever allow the boys to run an account with you further than the following Saturday after it is incurred, you will never come into my field or playground again."

Mr. Porson then went to the chief constable's, and after a short conversation with him a constable was told off" to accompany him. He and the master took their station at a short distance from the shop of the man White and waited quietly. A little after nine a figure was seen coming down the street from the other end. He passed quickly into the shop.

" That is the boy," Mr. Porson said.

"Wouldn't it be better, sir," the constable asked, "to wait till the deed is completed, then we can lay our hands on White as a receiver?"

"No," Mr. Porson replied, "for in that case the boy would have to appear with him in the dock, and that I wish of all things to avoid."

So saying he walked quickly on and entered the shop. Mather was leaning across the counter while the man was examining the pencil-case by the light of the candle.

" Five shillings," the man said, " and no more. I was nearly getting into trouble over that last job of yours."

" But it's worth a great deal more than that," Mather said. " You might give me ten."

"Well, take it back then," the man said, pushing it across the counter.

"Thank you, I will take it myself," Mr. Porson said quietly, as he advanced and stretched out his hand.

Mather turned round with a sudden cry, and then stood the picture of silent terror.

" As for you," the master said indignantly to the dealer, " you scoundrel, if you had your deserts I would hand you over to the constable, who is outside the door, as a receiver of stolen goods, and for inciting this boy to theft. I heard you offer him a sum of money for it which shows that you knew it was stolen; but your time will come, sir, and you will hang over the gate of York prison as many a poor wretch far less guilty than yourself has done;" for in those days death was the punishment of receivers of stolen goods, as well as of those convicted of highway robbery and burglary.

"Have mercy, sir, oh, spare me!" Mather exclaimed, falling on his knees. " Don't give me in charge."

" I am not going to do so," the master said. " Get up and come with me." Not a word was spoken on the way back to the school.

Mr. Porson then took Mather into his study, where they remained for half an hour. What passed between them was never known. In the morning the boys who

slept in the room with Mather were surprised to find that his bed was empty and the window open. He had gone to bed at half-past eight as usual, and saying he was sleepy had threatened to punch the head of any boy who spoke, so that all had gone off to sleep in a very short time. A stout ivy grew against the wall, and some fallen leaves on the ground showed them that he had climbed down with the assistance of its stem. But why he should have gone, and what on earth possessed him to run away, none could imagine. The news ran rapidly through the other bedrooms, and brimful of excitement all went down when the bell rang for prayers before breakfast. The list of names was called out by the master as usual, and the excitement grew breathless as the roll of the third class was called; but to the astonishment of all, Mather's name was omitted. When the list was concluded Mr. Porson said:

" Mather has left; I grieve to say that I have discovered that it was he who stole the book and pencil-case. He has confessed the whole to me, and he is, I trust, sincerely penitent. He slept last night on the sofa in my study, and has gone off this morning by the coach. I may tell you that I have written to his parents stating the whole circumstances under which he was driven to commit the theft, and that although I could not permit him to remain here I trusted and believed that his repentance was sincere, and that it would be a lesson to him through life, and I urged them to give him a further trial, and not to drive him to desperation by severity.

" There is a lesson which you may all learn from this.

Mather committed these crimes because he had borrowed money which he could not repay. Most foolishly and mistakenly the woman who supplies you with cakes had lent him money, and when he could not repay it according to his promise to her, threatened to report the case to me, and it was to prevent the matter coming to my ears that he took these things. Let this be a warning to jon, boys, through life. Never borrow money, never spend more than your means afford. An extravagance may seem to you but a small fault, but you see crime and disgrace may follow upon it. Think this well over, and be lenient in your hearts to your late schoolfellow. He was tempted, you see, and none of us can tell what we may do when temptation comes, unless we have God's help to enable us to withstand it, and to do what is right. Now let us fall to at our breakfast."

It was a strangely silent meal. Scarce a word was spoken, even in a whisper. It came as a shock to everybody there, that after all the dictionary should have been taken by one of their number, and that the master's kindness on that occasion should have been requited by another robbery seemed a disgrace to the whole school. That Mather, too, always loud, noisy, and overbearing, should have been the thief was surprising indeed. Had it been some quiet little boy, the sort of boy others are given to regard as a sneak, there would have been less surprise, but that Mather should do such a thing was astounding. These were probably the first reflections which occurred to every boy as he sat down to breakfast.

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The next impression was how good Mr. Porson had been about it. He might have given Mather in charge, and had him punished by law. He might have given him a terrific flogging and a public expulsion before all the school. Instead of that he had sent him quietly away, and seemed sorry for rather than angry with him. By the time the meal was finished there was probably not a boy but had taken an inward resolution that there was nothing he would not do for his master, and although such resolutions are generally but transient, Mr. Porson found that the good effect of his treatment of Mather was considerable and permanent. Lessons were more carefully learned, obedience was not perhaps more prompt, but it was more willing, and the boys lost no opportunity of showing how anxious they were to please in every respect.

Ned and his brother were not present when Mr. Porson explained the cause of Mather's absence to the others, but they were surrounded by their schoolfellows, all eager to tell the news upon their arrival in the playground a few minutes before the school began.

Before breaking up in June, Porson's played their first cricket-match with a strong village team, and beat them handsomely, although, as the boys said, it was to their master's bowling that their success was due. Still the eleven all batted fairly, and made so long a score that they won in one innings; and Mr. Porson promised them that before the season ended they should have a whole holiday, and play the Marsden Eleven.

Ned enjoyed his holiday rambles, taking several long

walks across the moors accompanied by Bill Swinton, who had now perfectly recovered. The discontent among the croppers, and indeed among the workers in the mills generally through the country was as great as ever; but the season was a good one; bread had fallen somewhat in price, and the pinch was a little less severe than it had been. The majority of the masters had been intimidated by the action of their hands from introducing the new machinery, and so far the relations between master and men in that part of Yorkshire at any rate remained unchanged. But although Ned enjoyed his rambles he was glad when the holidays were over. He had no friends of his own age in Marsden; his brother was too young to accompany him in his long walks, and Bill obtained a berth in one of the mills shortly after the holidays began, and was no longer available. Therefore Ned looked forward to meeting his schoolfellows again, to the fun of the cricket-field and playground, and even to lessons, for these were no longer terrible.

The school reopened with largely increased numbers. The reports which the boys had taken home of the changed conditions of things and of their master's kindness excited among all their friends an intense longing to go to a school where the state of things was so different to that which prevailed elsewhere; and the parents were equally satisfied with the results of the new master's teaching. Such as took the trouble to ask their boys questions found that they had acquired a real grasp of the subjects, and that they were able to answer clearly and intelligently.

The consequence was, the house was filled with its full complement of fifty boarders, and indeed Mr. Porson was obliged to refuse several applications for want of room. As he had not the same objection as his predecessor to receive home boarders, the numbers were swelled by eighteen boys whose parents resided in Marsden.

To meet the increased demands upon his teaching powers Mr. Porson engaged two ushers, both of them young men who had just left Durham. They were both pleasant and gentlemanly young fellows; and as Mr. Porson insisted that his own mode of teaching should be adopted, the change did not alter the pleasant state of things which had prevailed during the past half year, Both the ushers were fond of cricket, and one turned out to be at least equal to Mr. Porson as a bowler. Therefore the boys looked forward to their match with Marsden with some confidence.

Captain Sankey saw with great pleasure the steady improvement which was taking place in Ned's temper. It was not to be expected that the boy would at once overcome a fault of such long standing, but the outbursts were far less frequent, and it was evident that he was putting a steady check upon himself; so that his father looked forward to the time when he would entirely overcome the evil consequences engendered by his unchecked and undisciplined childhood.

CHAPTER VII.

A TERRIBLE SHOCK.

ED had been looking forward with great anticipations to Michaelmas day, upon which the great match was to take place; for he was one of the eleven, being the youngest of the boys included in it. An event, however, happened which deprived him of his share in the match, and caused the day to pass almost unnoticed. On the 20th of September the servant came in to Mr. Porson during morning school to say that he was wanted. A minute or two later she again re-entered and said that Ned and his brother were to go to the master's study. Much surprised at this summons they followed her. Mr. Porson was looking exceedingly grave.

"My dear boys," he said, "I have bad news for you. Very bad news. You must bear it bravely, looking for support and consolation to Him who alone can give it. Dr. Green's boy has just been here. He was sent down by his master to say that there has been a serious accident in the town."

The commencement of the master's speech and the graveness of his tone sent a serious thrill through the hearts of the boys. Mr. Porson would never have spoken thus had not the news been serious indeed.

When he paused Ned gave a little gasp and exclaimed, "My father!"

"Yes, Ned, I am grieved to say that it is your brave father who has suffered from the accident. It seems that as he was walking down the High Street one of Ramsay's heavy waggons came along. A little girl ran across the street ahead, but stumbled and fell close to the horses. Your father, forgetful of the fact of his wooden leg, rushed over to lift her; but the suddenness of the movement, he being a heavy man, snapped the wooden leg in sunder, and he fell headlong in the street. He was within reach of the child, and he caught her by the clothes and jerked her aside; but before he could, in his crippled condition, regain his feet, the wheel was upon him, and he has suffered very serious injuries."

"He is not dead, sir!" Ned gasped, while his brother began to cry piteously.

" No, Ned, he is not dead," Mr. Porson said; " but I fear, my dear boy, that it would be a cruel kindness did I not tell you to prepare yourself for the worst. I fear from what I hear that he is fatally injured, and that there is but little hope. Get your hats, my boys, and I will walk home with you at once."

There were but few words exchanged during that dismal walk, and these were addressed by Mr. Person to

Ned. " Try to calm yourself, my boy," he said, putting his hand on his shoulder, which was shaking with the boy's efforts to keep down his convulsive sobs; " try and nerve yourselves for the sake of your father himself, of your mother, and the little ones. The greatest kindness you can show to your father now is by being calm and composed."

"I will try, sir," Ned said as steadily as he could; "but you don't know how I loved him!"

" I can guess it, my boy; for I, too, lost my father when I was just your age. God's ways are not our ways, Ned; and be sure, although you may not see it now, that he acts for the best."

A little crowd stood gathered near the door. They were talking in low tones of the gallant way in which the crippled officer had sacrificed himself to save the child. They made way silently for the boys to pass. Ned opened the door and entered.

Abijah was in the hall. She was tearless, but her face was white and set. "My poor boy," she said to Ned, "he is in the parlour; he has just been asking for you. I am glad you have come. Your mother is in hysterics in her bed-room, and is going; on like a mad woman. You must be calm, dear, for your father's sake."

Ned gave a little nod, and, taking his brother's hand, opened the door of the parlour.

Captain Sankey was lying on the hearth-rug, his head propped up with pillows from the sofa; his face was an ashen pallor, and his eyes were closed. The doctor was

kneeling beside him, pouring some liquid from a glass between his lips. A strong friendship had sprung up between the two men, and tears were running fast down the doctor's cheeks. He motioned to the boys to approach. They fell on their knees by their father's side.

"Sankey," the doctor said in a steady voice, "here are your boys, Ned and Charlie." The eyes of the dying man opened slowly, and he looked at his sons, and Ned felt a slight pressure of the hand which he had taken in his own.

" God bless you, my boys!" he said, in a faint whisper. " Ned, be kind to your mother; care for her always. She will need all your kindness."

" I will, father," the boy said steadily. "I will take care of mother, I promise you."

A faint smile passed over the pale face; then the eyes closed again, and there was silence for five minutes, broken only by the sobbing of the younger boy. The doctor, who had his fingers on the pulse of Captain Sankey, leaned closely over him; then he laid his arm gently down, and putting his hand on Ned's shoulder said softly:

" Come, my boy, your father is out of pain now."

Ned gave one loud and bitter cry, and threw himself down by the side of the corpse, and gave way to his pent-up emotion.

The doctor led the younger boy from the room, and gave him into the care of Abijah. Then he returned and stood for a while watching Ned's terrible outburst of grief;

then he poured some wine into a glass. "My boy," he said tenderly, "you must not give way like this or you will make yourself ill. Drink this, Ned, and then go up and lie down on your bed until you feel better. Remember you must be strong for the sake of the others. You know you will have to bear your mother's burdens as well as your own."

He helped Ned to his feet and neld the glass to his lips, for the boy's hand was shaking so that he could not have held it. After drinking it Ned stumbled up-stairs and threw himself on the bed, and there cried silently for a long time; but the first passion of grief had passed, and he now struggled with his tears, and in an hour rose, bathed his flushed and swollen face, and went downstairs.

" Abijah," he said, in a voice which he struggled in vain to steady, " what is there for me to do ? How is my mother?"

" She has just cried herself off to sleep, Master Ned, and a mercy it is for her, poor lady, for she has been going on dreadful ever since he was brought in here; but if you go in to Master Charlie and Miss Lucy and try and comfort them it would be a blessing. I have not been able to leave your mother till now, and the poor little things are broken-hearted. I feel dazed myself, sir. Think of the captain, who went out so strong and well this morning, speaking so kind and bright just as usual, lying there!" and here Abijah broke down, and for the first time since Captain Sankey was carried into the house

tears came to her relief, and throwing her arms round Ned's neck she wept passionately.

Ned's own tears flowed too fast for him to speak for some time. At last he said quietly, " Don't cry so, Abi-jah. It is the death of all others that was fitted for him, he, so brave and unselfish, to die giving his life to save a child. You told me to be brave; it is you who must be brave, for you know that you must be our chief dependence now."

" I know, Master Ned; I know, sir," the woman said, choking down her sobs, and wiping her eyes with her apron, " and I will do my best, never fear. I feel better now I have had a good cry. Somehow I wasn't able to cry before. Now, sir, do you go to the children and I will look after things."

A fortnight passed. Captain Sankey had been laid in his grave, after such a funeral as had never been seen in Marsden, the mills being closed for the day, and all the shutters up throughout the little town, the greater part of the population attending the funeral as a mark of respect to the man who, after fighting the battles of his country, had now given his life for that of a child. The great cricket-match did not come off, it being agreed on all hands that it had better be postponed. Mr. Porson had called twice to see Ned, and had done much by his comforting words to enable him to bear up. He came again the day after the funeral.

" Ned," he said, " I think that you and Charlie had better come to school again on Monday. The sooner you

fall into your regular groove the better. It would only-do you both harm to mope about the house here; and although the laughter and noise of your schoolfellows will jar upon you for a while, it is better to overcome the feeling at once; and I am sure that you will best carry out what would have been his wishes by setting to your work again instead of wasting your time in listless grieving."

" I think so too, sir," Ned said, " but it will be awfully hard at first, and so terrible to come home and have no one to question one on the day's work, and to take an interest in what we have been doing."

"Very hard, Ned; I thoroughly agree with you, but it has to be borne, and remember there is One who will take interest in your work. If I were you I should take your brother out for walks this week. Get up into the hills with him, and try and get the colour back into his cheeks again. He is not so strong as you are, and the confinement is telling upon him—the fresh air will do you good too."

Ned promised to take his master's advice, and the next morning started after breakfast with Charlie. His mother had not yet risen, and indeed had not been down-stairs since the day of the accident, protesting that she was altogether unequal to any exertion whatever. Ned had sat with her for many hours each day, but he had indeed found it hard work. Sometimes she wept, her tears being mingled with self-reproaches that she had not been able to do more to brighten her husband's life.

Sometimes she would break off and reproach the boy bitterly for what she called his want of feeling. At other times her thoughts seemed directed solely towards the fashion of her mourning garments, and after the funeral she drove Ned almost to madness by wanting to know all the details of who was there and what was done, and was most indignant with him because he was able to tell her nothing, the whole scene having been as a mist to him, absorbed as he was in the thought of his father alone.

But Ned had never showed the least sign of impatience or hastiness, meeting tears, reproaches, and inquiries with the same stoical calmness and gentleness. Still it was with a sigh of relief that he took a long breath of fresh air as he left the house and started for a ramble on the moor with his brother. He would have avoided Varley, for he shrank even from the sympathy which Bill Swinton would give; but Bill would be away, so as it was the shortest way he took that road. As he passed Luke Marner's cottage the door opened and Mary came down to the gate. One of the little ones had seen Ned coming along the road and had run off to tell her. Little Jane Marner trotted along by Polly's side.

"Good morning, Polly!" Ned said, and walked on. He dreaded speech with anyone. Polly saw his intention and hesitated; then she said:

"Good morning, Master Ned! One moment, please sir."

Ned paused irresolutely.

" Please don't say anything," he began.

" No, sir, I am not agoing to—at least—" and then she

hesitated, and lifted up the child, who was about four years old, a soft-eyed, brown-haired little maiden. " It's little Jenny," she said; "you know sir, you know;" and she looked meaningly at the child as the tears stood in her eyes.

Ned understood at once.

"What!" he said; "was it her? I did not know; I had not heard."

" Yes, sir; she, and all of us owe her life to him. Feyther wanted to come down to you, but I said better not yet awhile, you would understand."

"How did it happen?" Ned said, feeling that here at least his wound would be touched with no rough hand.

"She went down to the town with Jarge, who was going to fetch some things I wanted. He left her looking in at a shop window while he went inside. They were some time serving him as there were other people in the shop. Jenny got tired, as she says, of waiting, and seeing some pictures in a window on the other side of the street started to run across, and her foot slipped, and—and—"

" I know," Ned said. " I am glad you have told me, Polly. I am glad it was someone one knows something about. Don't say anything more now, I cannot bear it."

" I understand, sir," the girl said gently. " God bless you!"

Ned nodded. He could not trust himself to speak, and turning he passed on with Charlie through the village, while Mary Powlett, with the child still in her arms, stood looking sorrowfully after him as long as he was in sight.

"So thou'st seen the boy?" Luke said, when on his return from work Polly told him what had happened. " Thou told's him, oi hope, how we all felt about it, and how grateful we was?"

"I didn't say much, feyther, he could not bear it; just a word or two; if I had said more he would have broken out crying, and so should I."

" Thou hast cried enoo, lass, the last ten days. Thou hast done nowt but cry," Luke said kindly, " and oi felt sore inclined to join thee. Oi ha' had hard work to keep back the tears, old though oi be, and oi a cropper."

" You are just as soft-hearted as I am, feyther, every bit, so don't pretend you are not;" and indeed upon the previous day Luke Marner had broken down even more completely than Mary. He had followed the funeral at a short distance, keeping with Mary aloof from the crowd; but when all was over, and the church-yard was left in quiet again, Luke had gone and stood by the still open grave of the man who had given his life for his child's, and had stood there with the tears streaming down his cheeks, and his strong frame so shaken by emotion that Polly had been forced to dry her own eyes and stifle her sobs, and to lead him quietly away

"Strange, bain't it, lass; feyther and son seem mixed up with Yarley. First the lad has a foight wi' Bill Swin-ton, and braakes the boy's leg; then t' feyther sends oop all sorts o' things to Bill, and his son comes up here and gets as friendly with Bill as if he were his brother, and gets to know you, and many another in the village.

Then our Jane goes down into t' town and would ha' lost her life if Captain he hadn't been passing by and saaved her. Then he gets killed. Just gived his life for hearn. Looks loike a fate aboot it; may be it ool be our toorn next, and if ever that lad waants a man to stand beside him Luke Marner will be there. And there's Bill too—oi believe that boy would lay down his life for him. He's very fond of our Janey—fonder nor her own brothers. He ain't got no sister of his own, and he's took to t' child wonderful since he got ill. He thowt a soight o' Ned Sankey afore; I doan't know what he wouldn't do for him now."

" I don't suppose, feyther, as any of us will be able to do anything for him; but we may do, who knows?"

" Ay, who knows, lass ? toimes is main bad, and oi doot there will be trouble, but oi doan't see as that can affect him no ways, being as he is a lad, and having nowt to do with the mills—but oi do hoape as the time may come, lass, as we can show un as we knows we owes a loife to him."

On the Monday following Ned and Charlie returned to school, and found it less painful than Ned had expected. Mr. Porson had taken Ripon aside and had told him that the kindest way to treat the boys would be to avoid all allusion to their loss or anything like a show of open sympathy, but to let them settle quietly into their places. " Sankey will know you all feel for him, Ripon, he will need no telling of that."

Ripon passed the word round the school, and accor-

dingly when the boys came into the playground, two or three minutes before the bell rang, Ned, to his great relief, found that with the exception of a warm silent wring of the hand from a few of those with whom he was most intimate, and a kindly nod from others, no allusion was made to his fortnight's absence or its cause.

For the next month he worked hard and made up the time he had lost, running straight home when he came out from school, and returning just in time to go in with the others; but gradually he fell into his former ways, and by the time the school broke up at Christmas was able to mix with the boys and take part in their games. At home he did his best to make things bright, but it was uphill work. Mrs. Sankey was fretful and complaining. Their income was reduced by the loss of Captain Sankey's half-pay, and they had now only the interest of the fortune of four thousand pounds which Mrs. Sankey had brought to her husband on her marriage. This sum had been settled upon her, and was entirely under her own control. The income was but a small one, but it was sufficient for the family to live upon with care and prudence.

Captain Sankey had made many friends since the time when he first settled at Marsden, and all vied with each other in their kindness to his widow. Presents of game were constantly left for her; baskets of chickens, eggs, and fresh vegetables were sent down by Squire Simmonds and other county magnates, and their carriages often stopped at the door to make inquiries.

Many people who had not hitherto called now did so, and all Marsden seemed anxious to testify its sympathy with the widow of the brave officer. Ned was touched with these evidences of respect for his father's memory. Mrs. Sankey was pleased for herself, and she would of an evening inform Ned with much gratification of the visits she had received.

Ned was glad that anything should occur which could rouse his mother, and divert her from her own grievances; but the tone in which she spoke often jarred painfully upon him, and he wondered how his mother could find it in her heart to receive these people and to talk over his father's death. But Mrs. Sankey liked it. She was conscious she looked well in her deep mourning, and that even the sombre cap was not unbecoming with her golden hair peeping out beneath it. Tears were always at her command, and she had ever a few ready to drop upon her dainty embroidered handkerchief when the occasion commanded it; and her visitors, when they agreed among themselves, what a soft gentle woman that poor Mrs. Sankey was, but sadly delicate you know—had no idea of the querulous complaining and fretfulness whose display was reserved for her own family only. To this Ned was so accustomed that it passed over his head almost unheeded; not so her constant allusions to his father. Wholly unconscious of the agony which it inflicted upon the boy, Mrs. Sankey was incessantly quoting his opinions or utterances.

"Ned, I do wish you would not fidget with your feet.

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You know your dear father often told you of it;" or, "As your dear father used to say, Ned;" until the boy in despair would throw down his book and rush out of the room to calm himself by a run in the frosty night air; while Mrs. Sankey would murmur to herself, "That boy's temper gets worse and worse, and with my poor nerves how am I to control him?"

Mr. Porson was very kind to him in those days. During that summer holiday he had very frequently spent the evening at Captain Sankey's, and had formed a pretty correct idea of the character of Ned's mother. Thus when he saw that Ned, when he entered the school after breakfast or dinner, had an anxious hunted look, and was clearly in a state of high tension, he guessed he was having a bad time of it at home.

Charlie had fast got over the shock of his father's death; children quickly recover from a blow, and, though delicate, Charlie was of a bright and gentle disposition, ready to be pleased at all times, and not easily upset.

One morning when Ned came in from school looking pale and white, gave random answers to questions, and even, to the astonishment of the class, answered Mr. Porson himself snappishly, the master, when school was over and the boys were leaving their places, said:

"Sankey, I want to have a few words with you in the study."

Ned followed his master with an air of indifference. He supposed that he was going to be lectured for the way he had spoken, but as he said to himself, "What did it

matter! what did anything matter!" Mr. Porson did not sit down on entering the room, but when Ned had closed the door after him took a step forward and laid his hand on his shoulder.

"My boy," he said, "what is it that is wrong with you? I fear that you have trouble at home."

Ned stood silent, but the tears welled up into his eyes.

"It can't be helped, sir," he said in a choking voice, and then with an attempt at gaiety: "it will be all the same fifty years hence, I suppose."

"That is a poor consolation, Ned," Mr. Porson rejoined. "Fifty years is a long time to look forward to. Can't we do anything before that?"

Ned was silent.

" I do not want you to tell me, Ned, anything that happens at home—God forbid that I should pry into matters so sacred as relations between a boy and a parent!—but I can see, my boy, that something is wrong. You are not yourself. At first when you came back I thought all was well with you; you were, as was natural, sad and depressed, but I should not wish it otherwise. But of late a change has come over you; you are nervous and excited; you have gone down in your class, not, I can see, because you have neglected your work, but because you cannot bring your mind to bear upon it. Now all this must have a cause. Perhaps a little advice on my part might help you. We shall break up in a week, Ned, and I shall be going away for a time. I should like to think before I went that things were going on better with you."

"I don't want to say anything against my mother/' Ned said in a low voice. "She means kindly, sir; but, oh! it is so hard to bear. She is always talking about father, not as you would talk, sir, but just as if he were alive and might come in at any moment, and it seems sometimes as if it would drive me out of my mind."

"No doubt it is trying, my boy," Mr. Porson said; "but you see natures differ, and we must all bear with each other and make allowances. Your mother's nature, as far as I have seen of her, is not a deep one. She was very fond of your father, and she is fond of you; but you know, just as still waters run deep, shallow waters are full of ripples, and eddies, and currents. She has no idea that what seems natural and right to her should jar upon you. You upon your part can scarcely make sufficient allowance for her different treatment of a subject which is to you sacred. I know how you miss your father, but your mother must miss him still more. No man ever more lovingly and patiently tended a woman than he did her so far as lay in his power. She had not a wish ungratified. You have in your work an employment which occupies your thoughts and prevents them from turning constantly to one subject; she has nothing whatever to take her thoughts from the past. It is better for her to speak of him often than to brood over him in silence. Your tribute to your father's memory is deep and silent sorrow, hers is frequent allusion. Doubtless her way jars upon you; but, Ned, you are younger than she, and it is easier for you to change. Why not try and accept her method as

being a part of her, and try, instead of wincing every

time that she touches the sore, to accustom yourself to it.

It may be hard at first, but it will be far easier in the

end."

Ned stood silent for a minute or two; then he said: "I will try, sir. My father's last words to me were to

be kind to mother, and I have tried hard, and I will go

on trying."

"That is right, my boy; and ask God to help you. We

all have our trials in this life, and this at present is

yours; pray God to give you strength to bear it."

CHAPTER VIIL

NED IS SORELY TRIED.

MONG the many who called upon Mrs. Sankey after the death of her husband was Mr. Mul-ready, the owner of a mill near Marsden. He was one of the leading men in the place, although his mill was by no means a large one. He took rank in the eyes of the little town with men in a much larger way of business by means of a pushing manner and a fluent tongue. He had come to be considered an authority upon most subjects. He paid much attention to his dress, and drove the fastest horse and the best got-up gig in that part of the country; but it was Mr. Mulready's manner which above all had raised him to his present position in the esteem of the good people of Marsden. He had the knack of adapting himself to the vein of those he addressed.

With the farmers who came into market he was bluff and cordial; with people in general he was genial and good-tempered. At meetings at which the county gentry were present he was quiet, business-like, and a trifle deferential,

showing that he recognized the difference between his position and theirs. With ladies he was gay when they were gay, sympathetic when sympathy was expected. With them he was even more popular than with the men, for the latter, although they admired and somewhat envied his varied acquirements, were apt in the intimacy of private conversation to speak of him as a humbug.

There was one exception, however, to his general popularity. There was no mill-owner in the neighbourhood more heartily detested by his workpeople; but as these did not mingle with the genteel classes of Marsden their opinion of Mr. Mulready went for nothing. The mill-owner was a man of three or four and forty, although when dressed in his tightly-fitting brown coat with its short waist, its brass buttons, and high collar, and with a low hat with narrow brim worn well forward and coming down almost to the bridge of his nose, he looked seven or eight years younger.

His hair was light, his trimly cut mutton-chop whiskers were sandy, he had a bright fresh complexion, a large mouth, and good teeth, which he always showed when he smiled, and in public he was always smiling; his eyes were light in colour, very close together, and had a somewhat peculiar appearance. Indeed there were men who hinted that he had a slight cast, but these were, no doubt envious of his popularity. Mrs. Sankey had been flattered by his visit and manner; indeed it could hardly have been otherwise, for he had expressed a sympathy and deference which were very soothing to her.

"It is indeed kind of you to receive me," he had said. "I know, of course, that it is not usual for a man who has the misfortune to be unmarried to make a call upon a lady, but I could not help myself. William Mulready is not a man to allow his feelings to be sacrificed to the cold etiquette of the world. I had not the pleasure of the acquaintance of that most brave and distinguished officer your late husband. I had hoped that some day circumstances might throw me in contact with him, but it was not for me, a humble manufacturer, to force my acquaintance upon one socially my superior; but, my dear madam, when I heard of that terrible accident, of that noble self-devotion, I said to myself, 'William Mulready, when a proper and decent time elapses you must call upon the relict of your late noble and distinguished townsman, and assure her of your sympathy and admiration, even if she spurns you from the door.'"

"You could not think I should do that, Mr. Mulready," Mrs. Sankey said. " It is most gratifying to me to receive this mark of sympathy in my present sad position;" and she sighed deeply.

" You are good indeed to say so," Mr. Mulready said in a tone of deep gratitude; " but I might have been sure that my motives at least would not be misunderstood by a high-bred and delicate lady like yourself. I will not now trespass on your time, but hope that I may be permitted to call again. Should there be anything in which so humble an individual could be in the slightest degree useful to you pray command my services. I know the

responsibility which you must feel at being left in charge of those two noble boys and your charming little daughter must be well-nigh overwhelming, and if you would not think it presumption I would say that any poor advice or opinion which I, who call myself in some degree a man of the world, can give, will be always at your service."

" You are very good," Mrs. Samkey murmured. " It is indeed a responsibility. My younger boy and girl are all that I could wish, but the elder is already almost beyond me;" and by the shake of her head she testified that her troubles on that score approached martyrdom.

" Never fear, my dear madam," Mr. Mulready said heartily. " Boys will be boys, and I doubt not that he will grow up everything that you could desire. I may have heard that he was a little passionate. There was a trifling affair between him and his schoolmaster, was there not? But these things mend themselves, and doubtless all will come well in time; and now I have the honour of wishing you good-morning."

" Charming manners!" Mrs. Sankey said to herself when her visitor had left. " A little old-fashioned, perhaps, but so kind and deferential. He seemed to understand my feelings exactly."

That evening when they were at tea Mrs. Sankey mentioned the agreeable visitor who had called in the afternoon.

"What! William Mulready!" Ned exclaimed; "Foxey, as his hands call him. I have heard Bill speak of him

often. His men hate him. They say he is a regular tyrant. What impudence his coming here!"

" Ned, I am surprised at you," his mother said angrily. " I am sure Mr. Mulready is nothing of the sort. He is a most kind and considerate gentleman, and I will not allow you to repeat these things you hear from the low companions whom your father permitted you to associate with."

" Bill is not a low companion, mother," Ned exclaimed passionately. " A better fellow never stood, and Foxey is not kind and considerate. He is a brutal tyrant, and I am sure my father, if you will quote his opinion, would not have had such a man inside his doors."

" Leave the room, Ned, this moment," his mother exclaimed, more angry than he had ever seen her before. " I am ashamed of you speaking to me in that way. You would not have dared to do it had your father been alive."

Ned dashed down his scarcely-begun bread and butter and flung himself out of the room, and then out of the house, and it was some hours before he returned. Then he went straight up to his mother's room.

" I beg your pardon, mother," he said quietly. " I am very sorry I spoke as I did. I ought not to have done so."

« Very well," Mrs. Sankey said coldly; " then don't do it again, Ned."

Without another word Ned went off to his books. He was grieved and sore at heart. He had during his walk fought a hard battle with himself, and had conquered.

As his temper cooled down he had felt that he had broken his promise, that he had not been kind to his mother; felt, too, that her accusation was a true one—he would not have dared to speak so to her had his father been alive.

" But it was so different then," he had said to himself as the tears chased each other down his cheeks. " Father understood me, and cared for me, and made allowances. It was worth while fighting against one's temper just to have him put his hand on my shoulder and say, ' Well done, my boy.' Now it is so different. I will go on trying for his sake; but I know it's no good. Do what I will, I can't please her. It's my fault, I dare say, but I do try my best. I do, indeed, father," he said, speaking out loud, "if you can hear me, I do, indeed, try to be kind to mother, but she won't let me. I do try to make allowances, that is, when I am not in a passion, and then I go and spoil it all, like a beast, just as I did to-night. Anyhow," he said to himself as he turned his face homeward again, " I will go and tell her I am sorry, and beg her pardon. I don't suppose she will be nice, but I can't help that. It's my duty anyhow, and I will try and not say anything against Foxey next time she speaks of him."

The latter part of his resolution Ned found it very hard to maintain, for Mr. Mulready became a not unfre-quent visitor. He had always some excuse for calling, either to bring in a basket of fresh trout, some game, or hot-house fruit, for, as he said, he knew her appetite was

delicate and needed tempting, or some book newly issued from the London press which he was sure she would appreciate.

After a short time Mrs. Sankey ceased to speak of these visits, perhaps because she saw how Ned objected to the introduction of Mr. Mulready's name, perhaps for some other reason, and a year passed without Ned's being seriously ruffled on the subject.

Ned was now nearly sixteen. He had worked hard, and was the head boy at Porson's. It had always been regarded as a fixed thing that he should go into the army. As the son of an officer who had lost his leg in the service it was thought that he would be able to obtain a commission without difficulty, and Squire Simmonds, who had been a kind friend since his father's death, had promised to ask the lord-lieutenant of the county to interest himself in the matter, and had no doubt that the circumstances of Captain Sankey's death would be considered as an addition to the claim of his services in the army.

Captain Sankey had intended that Ned should have gone to a superior school to finish his education, but the diminished income of the family had put this out of the question, and the subject had never been mooted after his death. Ned, however, felt that he was making such good progress under Mr. Porson that he was well content to remain where he was.

His struggle with his temper had gone on steadily, and he hoped he had won a final victory over it. Mr. Porson

had been unwearied in his kindnesses, and often took Ned for an hour in the evening in order to push him forward, and although he avoided talking about his home life the boy felt that he could, in case of need, pour out his heart to him; but, indeed, things had gone better at home. Mrs. Sankey was just as indisposed as ever to take any share whatever in the trouble of housekeeping, but as Abijah was perfectly capable of keeping the house in order without her instructions things went on smoothly and straightly in this respect.

In other matters home life was more pleasant than it had been. Mrs. Sankey was less given to querulous complaining, more inclined to see things in a cheerful light, and Ned especially noticed with satisfaction that the references to his father which had so tried him had become much less frequent of late.

One day in September, when his father had been dead just a year, one of the town boys, a lad of about Ned's age, said to him as they were walking home from school together:

" Well, Ned, I suppose I ought to congratulate you, although I don't know whether you will see it in that light."

"What do you mean?" Ned said. "I don't know that anything has happened on which I should be particularly congratulated, except on having made the top score against the town last week."

" Oh! I don't mean that," the boy said. " I mean about Mulready."

"What do you mean?" Ned said, stopping short and turning very white.

" Why," the lad said laughing, " all the town says he is going to marry your mother."

Ned stood as if stupefied. Then he sprang upon his companion and seized him by the throat.

" It's a lie," he shouted, shaking him furiously. " It's a lie, I say, Smithers, and you know it. I will kill you if you don't say it's a lie."

With a great effort Smithers extricated himself from Ned's grasp.

" Don't choke a fellow," he said. " It may be a lie if you say it is, but it is not my lie anyhow People have been talking about it for some time. They say he's been down there nearly every day. Didn't you know it?"

"Know it?" Ned gasped. "I have not heard of his being in the house for months, but I will soon find out the truth."

And without another word he dashed off at full speed up the street. Panting and breathless he rushed into the house, and tore into the room where his mother was sitting trifling with a piece of fancy-work.

" I do wish, Edward, you would not come into the room like a whirlwind. You know how any sudden noise jars upon my nerves. Why, what is the matter?" she broke off suddenly, his pale, set face catching her eye, little accustomed as she was to pay any attention to Ned's varying moods.

NEDS HORROR AT THE DREADFUL NEWS.

" Mother," he panted out, " people are saying an awful thing about you, a wicked, abominable thing. I know, of course, it is not true, but I want just to hear you say so, so that I can go out and tell people they lie. How dare they say such things!"

"Why, what do you mean, Edward?" Mrs. Sankey said, almost frightened at the boy's vehemence.

" Why, they say that you are going to marry that horrible man Mulready. It is monstrous, isn't it ? I think they ought to be prosecuted and punished for such a wicked thing, and father only a year in his grave."

Mrs. Sankey was frightened at Ned's passion. Ever since the matter had first taken shape in her mind she had felt a certain uneasiness as to what Ned would say of it, and had, since it was decided, been putting off from day to day the telling of the news to him. She had, in his absence, told herself over and over again that it was no business of his, and that a boy had no right to as much as question the actions of his mother; but somehow when he was present she had always shrunk from telling him. She now took refuge in her usual defence—tears.

" It is shameful," she said, sobbing, as she held her handkerchief to her eyes, "that a boy should speak in this way to his mother; it is downright wicked."

"But I am not speaking to you, mother; I am speaking of other people—the people who have invented this horrible lie—for it is a lie, mother, isn't it? It is not possible it can be true?"

" It is true," Mrs. Sankey said, gaining courage from

her anger; "it is quite true. And you are a wicked and abominable boy to talk in that way to me. Why shouldn't I marry again? Other people marry again, and why shouldn't I? I am sure your poor father would never have wished me to waste my life by remaining single, with nothing to do but to look after you children. And it is shameful of you to speak in that way of Mr. Mulready."

Ned stopped to hear no more. At her first words he had given a low gasping cry, as one who has received a terrible wound. The blood flew to his head, the room swam round, and he seemed to feel the veins in his temples swell almost to bursting. The subsequent words of his mother fell unheeded on his ears, and turning round he went slowly to the door, groping his way as one half-asleep or stupefied by a blow. Mechanically he opened the door and went out into the street; his cap was still on his head, but he neither thought of it one way or the other.

Almost without knowing it he turned from the town and walked towards the hills. Had anyone met him by the way they would assuredly have thought that the boy had been drinking, so strangely and unevenly did he walk. His face was flushed almost purple, his eyes were bloodshot; he swayed to and fro as he walked, sometimes pausing altogether, sometimes hurrying along for a few steps. Passing a field where the gate stood open he turned into it, kept on his way for some twenty yards further, and then fell at full length on the grass. There

he lay unconscious for some hours, and it was not until the evening dews were falling heavily that he sat up and looked round.

For some time he neither knew where he was nor what had brought him there. At last the remembrance of what had passed flashed across him, and with a cry of "Father! father!" he threw himself at full length again with his head on his arm; but this time tears came to his relief, and for a long time he cried with a bitterness of grief even greater than that which he had suffered at his father's death. The stars were shining brightly when he rose to his feet, his clothes were soaked with dew, and he trembled with cold and weakness.

"What am I to do?" he said to himself; " what am I to do?" He made his way back to the gate and leaned against it for some time; then, having at last made up his mind, he turned his back on the town and walked towards Varley, moving more slowly and weariedly than if he was at the end of a long and fatiguing day's walk. Slowly he climbed the hill and made his way through the village till he reached the Swintons' cottage. He tapped at the door with his hand, and lifting the latch he opened the door a few inches.

"Bill, are you in?" There was an exclamation of surprise.

" Why, sure-ly, it's Maister Ned !" and Bill came to the door.

" Come out, Bill, I want to speak to you."

Much surprised at the low and subdued tone in which

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Ned spoke, Bill snatched down his cap from the peg by the door and joined him outside.

"What be't, Maister Ned ? what be t' matter with thee? Has owt gone wrong ?"

Ned walked on without speaking. In his yearning for sympathy, in his intense desire to impart the miserable news to some one who would feel for him, he had come to his friend Bill. He had thought first of going to Mr. Porson. But though his master would sympathize with him he would not be able to feel as he did; he would no doubt be shocked at hearing that his mother was so soon going to marry again, but he would not be able to understand the special dislike to Mr. Mulready, still less likely to encourage his passionate resentment. Bill would, he knew, do both, for it was from him he had learned how hated the mill-owner was among his people. But at present he could not speak. He gave a short wave of his hand to show that he heard, but could not answer yet, and with his head bent down made his way out through the end of the village on to the moor—Bill following him, wondering and sympathetic, unable to conjecture what had happened. Presently, when they had left the houses far behind them, Ned stopped.

"What be't, Maister Ned?" Bill again asked, laying his strong hand upon Ned's shoulder; "tell oi what it be. Hast got in another row with t' maister? If there be owt as oi can do, thou knowest well as Bill Swinton be with thee heart and soul."

" I know, Bill—I know," Ned said in a broken voice,

"but you can do nothing; I can do nothing; no one can. But it's dreadful to think of. It's worse than if I had killed twenty masters. Only think—only think, Bill, my mother's going to marry Mulready!"

" Thou doesn't say so, lad ! What! thy mother marry Foxey! Oi never heer'd o' such a thing. Well, that be bad news, surely! Well, well, only to think, now! Poor lad! Well, that beats all!"

The calamity appeared so great to Bill that for some time no idea occurred to him which could, under the circumstances, be considered as consolatory. But Ned felt the sympathy conveyed in the strong grasp of his shoulder, and in the muttered "Well, well, now!" to which Bill gave vent at intervals.

"What bee'st going to do vor to stop it?" he asked at last.

"What can I do, Bill? She won't listen to me—she never does. Anything I say always makes her go the other way. She wouldn't believe anything I said against him. It would only make her stick to him all the more."

"Do'st think," Bill suggested after another long pause, "that if we got up a sort of depitation—Luke Marner and four or five other steady chaps as knows him; yes, and Polly Powlett, she could do the talking—to go to her and tell her what a thundering bad un he is—dost think it would do any good?"

Even in his bitter grief Ned could hardly help smiling at the thought of such a deputation waiting upon his mother.

" No, it wouldn't do, Bill."

Bill was silent again for some time.

"Dost want un killed, Maister Ned?" he said in a low voice at last; "'cause if ye do oi would do it for ye. Oi would lay down my life for ye willing, as thou knowest; and hanging ain't much, arter all. They say 'tis soon over. Anyhow oi would chance it, and perhaps they wouldn't find me out."

Ned grasped his friend's hand.

"I could kill him myself!" he exclaimed passionately. "I have been thinking of it; but what would be the good? I know what my mother is—when once she has made up her mind there's no turning her; and if this fellow were out of the way, likely enough she would take up with another in no time."

" But it couldn't been as bad as if it wur Foxey," Bill urged, " he be the very wovsest lot about Marsden."

"I would do it," Ned said passionately; "I would do it over and over again, but for the disgrace it would bring on Charlie and Lucy."

"But there would be no disgrace if oi was to do it, Maister Ned."

'Yes, there would, Bill—a worse disgrace than if I did it myself. It would be a nice thing to let you get hanged for my affairs; but let him look out—let him try to ill-treat Charlie and Lucy, and he will see if I don't get even with him. I am not so much afraid of that—it's the shame of the thing. Only to think that all Marsden should know my mother is going to be married again

within a year of my father's death, and that after being his wife she was going to take such a man as this! It's awful, downright awful, Bill!"

" Then what art thou going to do, Maister Ned—run away and 'list for a soldier, or go to sea ?"

" I wish I could," Ned exclaimed. " I would turn my back on Marsden and never come back again, were it not for the little ones. Besides," he added after a pause, "father's last words were, 'Be kind to mother;' and she will want it more than he ever dreamt of."

"She will that," Bill agreed; "leastways unless oi be mistaken. And what be'st going to do now, lad? Be'st agoing whoam?"

" No, I won't go home to-night," Ned replied. "I must think it over quietly, and it would be worse to bear there than anywhere else. No, I shall just walk about."

" Thou canst not walk abowt all night, Maister Ned," Bill said positively; "it bain't to be thowt of. If thou don't mind thou canst have moi bed and oi can sleep on t' floor."

" No, I couldn't do that," Ned said, " though I do feel awfully tired and done up; but your brothers would be asking me questions and wondering why I didn't go home. I could not stand that."

"No, Maister Ned, oi can see that wouldn't do; but if we walk about for an hour or two, or—no, I know of a better plan. We can get in at t' window of the school; it bain't never fastened, and bain't been for years, seeing as thar bain't been neither school nor schoolers since auld

Mother Brown died. Oi will make a shift to loight a fire there. There be shutters, so no one will see the loight. Then oi will bring ee up some blankets from our house, and if there bain't enough Polly will lend me some when oi tell her who they are for. She bain't a one to blab. What dost thou say?"

Ned, who felt utterly worn out, assented gladly to the proposal, and an entrance was easily effected into the desolate cottage formerly used as a day-school. Bill went off at once and soon returned with a load of firewood; the shutters were then carefully closed, and a fire quickly blazed brightly on the hearth. Bill then went away again, and in a quarter of an hour returned with Mary Powlett. He carried a bundle of rugs and blankets, while she had a kettle in one hand and a large basket in the other.

" Good-evening! Master Sankey," she said as she entered. " Bill has told me all about it, and I am sorry indeed for you and for your mother. It is worse for her, poor lady, than for you. You will soon be old enough to go out into the world if you don't like things at home; but she will have to bear what trouble comes to her. And now I thought you would like a cup of tea, so I have brought the kettle and things up. I haven't had tea yet, and they don't have tea at Bill's; but I like it, though feyther grumbles sometimes, and says it's too expensive for the likes of us in sich times as these; but he knows I would rather go without meat than without tea, so he lets me have it. Bill comes in for a cup sometimes, for he likes it better than beer, and it's a deal better for him to

be sitting taking a cup of tea with me than getting into the way of going down to the 'Spotted Dog,' and drinking beer there. So we will all have a cup together. No one will disturb us. Feyther is down at the 'Brown Cow;' and when I told the children I had to go out on special business they all promised to be good, and Jarge said he would see them all safely into bed. I told him I should be back in an hour."

While Polly was speaking she was bustling about the room, putting things straight; with a wisp of heather she swept up the dust which had accumulated on the floor, in a semicircle in front of the fire, and laid down the rugs and blankets to form seats. Three cups and saucers, a little jug of milk, a tea-pot, and basin of sugar were placed in the centre, and a pile of slices of bread and butter beside them, while from a paper-bag she produced a cake which she had bought at the village shop on her way up.

Ned watched her preparations listlessly.

" You are very good, Polly," he said, " and I shall be very glad of the cup of tea, but I cannot eat anything."

"Never mind," she said cheerfully. "Bill and I can do the eating, and perhaps after you have had a cup of tea you will be able to, for Bill tells me you have had nothing to eat since breakfast."

Ned felt cheered by the warm blaze of the fire and by the cheerful sound of the kettle, and after taking a cup of tea found that his appetite was coming, and was soon able to eat his share. Mary Powlett kept up a

cheerful talk while the meal was going on, and no allusion was made to the circumstances which had brought Ned there. After it was done she sat and chatted for an hour. Then she said:

"I must be off now, and I think, Bill, you'd best be going soon too, and let Master Ned have a good night of it. I will make him up his bed on the rugs; and I will warrant, after all the trouble he has gone through, he will sleep like a top."

"^fffitf 3 "

CHAPTER IX.

A PAINFUL TIME.

HEN Ned was left alone he rolled himself up in the blankets, placed a pillow which Polly had brought him under his head, and lay and looked at the fire; but it was not until the flames had died down, and the last red glow had faded into blackness that he fell off to sleep. His thoughts were bitter in the extreme. He pictured to himself the change which would take place in his home life with Mulready the manufacturer, the tyrant of the workmen, ruling over it. For himself he doubted not that he would be able to hold his own. " He had better not try on his games with me," he muttered savagely. " Though I am only sixteen he won't find it easy to bully me; but of course Charlie and Lucy can't defend themselves. However, I will take care of them. Just let him be unkind to them, and see what comes of it! As to mother, she must take what she gets, at least she deserves to. Only to think of it! only to think of it! Oh, how bitterly she will come to repent! How could she do it!

"And with father only dead a year! But I must stand by her too. I promised father to be kind to her, though he could never have guessed how she would need it. He meant that I would only put up, without losing my temper, with her way of always pretending to be ill, and never doing anything but lie on the sofa and read poetry. Still, of course it meant I was to be kind anyhow whatever happened, and I will try to be so, though it is hard when she has brought such trouble upon us all.

"As for Mulready I should like to burn his mill down, or to break his neck. I hate him; it's bad enough to be a tyrant; but to be a tyrant and a hypocrite too, is horrible. Well, at any rate he shan't lord it over me;" and so at last Ned dropped off to sleep. He was still soundly asleep when Bill Swinton came in to wake him. It was half-past six, a dull October morning with a dreary drizzling rain. Bill brought with him a mug of hot tea and some thick slices of bread and butter. Ned got up and shook himself.

" What o'clock is it, Bill?"

"Half-past six; the chaps went off to t' mill an hour gone; oi've kept some tea hot for ee."

" Thank you, Bill, my head aches, and so do all my bones, and I feel as if I hadn't been asleep all night, although, indeed, I must have slept quite as long as usual. Can't I have a wash?"

"Yes," Bill said, "thou canst come to our place; but thou hadst best take thy breakfast whilst it be hot. It ull waken thee up loike."

Ned drank the tea and ate a slice of bread and butter, and felt refreshed thereat. Then he ran with Bill to his cottage and had a wash, and then started for the town. It was eight o'clock when he reached home. Abijah was at the door, looking down the road as he came up.

"Oh! Master Ned, how can you go on so ? Not a bit of sleep have I had this blessed night, and the mistress in strong hystrikes all the evening. Where have you been?" Ned gave a grunt at the news of his mother's hysterics— a grunt which clearly expressed " served her right," but he only answered the last part of the question.

"I have been up at Varley, and slept at the school-house. Bill Swinton and Polly Powlett made me up a bed and got me tea and breakfast. I am right enough."

" But you shouldn't have gone away, Master Ned, in that style, leaving us to wait and worry ourselves out of our senses."

" Do you know what she told me, Abijah ? Wasn't it enough to make any fellow mad ?"

" Ay, ay," the nurse said. " I know. I have see'd it coming months ago; but it wasn't no good for me to speak. Ay lad, it's a sore trouble for you, sure-ly a sore trouble for you, and for us all; but it ain't no manner of use for you to set yourself agin it. Least said sooner mended, Master Ned; in a case like this it ain't no good your setting yourself up again the missis. She ain't strong in some things, but she's strong enough in her will, and you ought to know by this time that what she sets her mind on she gets. It were so alius in the captain's time, and

if he couldn't change her, poor patient lamb—for if ever there were a saint on arth he was that—you may be sure that you can't. So try and take it quietly, dearie. It be main hard for ye, and it ain't for me to say as it isn't; but for the sake of peace and quiet, and for the sake of the little ones, Master Ned, it's better for you to take it quiet. If I thought as it would do any good for you to make a fuss I wouldn't be agin it; but it ain't, you know, and it will be worse for you all if you sets him agin you to begin with. Now go up and see your mother, dearie, afore you goes off to school. I have just taken her up her tea."

" I have got nothing to say to her," Ned growled.

"Yes, you have, Master Ned; you have got to tell her you hopes she will be happy. You can do that, you know, with a clear heart, for you do hope so. Fortunately she didn't see him yesterday; for when he called I told him she was too ill to see him, and a nice taking she was in when I told her he had been and gone; but I didn't mind that, you know, and it was better she shouldn't see him when she was so sore about the words you had said to her. It ain't no use making trouble aforehand, or setting him agin you. He knows, I reckon, as he won't be welcomed here by you. The way he has always come when you would be out showed that clear enough. But it ain't no use making matters worse. It's a pretty kettle of fish as it stands. No, go up, dearie, like a good boy, and make things roight."

Ned lingered irresolute for a little time in the hall, and then his father's words, "Be kind to her," came strongly

in his mind, and he slowly went upstairs and knocked at his mother's door.

"Oh! here you are again!" she said in querulous tones as he entered, "after being nearly the death of me with your wicked goings on! I don't know what you will come to, speaking to me as you did yesterday, and then running away and stopping out all night."

"It was wrong, mother," Ned said quietly, "and I have come to tell you I am sorry; but you see the news was very sudden, and I wasn't prepared for it. I did not know that he had been coming here, and the news took me quite by surprise. I suppose fellows never do like their mothers marrying again. It stands to reason they wouldn't; but, now I have thought it over, I am sorry I spoke as I did, and I do hope, mother, you will be happy with him."

Mrs. Sankey felt mollified. She had indeed all along dreaded Ned's hearing the news, and had felt certain it would produce a desperate outbreak on his part. Now that it was over she was relieved. The storm had been no worse than she expected, and now that Ned had so speedily come round, and was submissive, she felt a load off her mind.

" Very well, Ned," she said more graciously than usual, " I am glad that you have seen the wickedness of your conduct. I am sure that I am acting for the best, and that it will be a great advantage to you and your brother and sister having a man like Mr. Mulready to help you push your way in life. I am sure I am thinking of

your interest as much as my own; and I have spoken to him over and over again about you, and he has promised dozens of times to do his best to be like a father to you all." Ned winced perceptibly.

"All right, mother! I do hope you will be happy; but, please, don't let us talk about it again till — till it comes off; and, please, don't let him come here in the evening. I will try and get accustomed to it in time; but you see it's rather hard at first, and you know I didn't expect it."

So saying Ned left the room, and collecting his books made his way off" to school, leaving his mother highly satisfied with the interview.

His absence from afternoon school had, of course, been noticed, and Smithers had told his friends how Ned had flown at him on his speaking to him about the talk of his mother and Mulready. Of course before afternoon school broke up every boy knew that Ned Sankey had cut up rough about the report; and although the great majority of the boys did not know Mr. Mulready by name there was a general feeling of sympathy with Ned. The circumstances of his father's death had, of course, exalted him greatly in the eyes of his school-fellows, and it was the unanimous opinion, that after having had a hero for his father, a fellow would naturally object to having a stepfather put over him.

Ned's absence was naturally associated with the news, and caused much comment and even excitement. His attack upon Mr. Hathorn had become a sort of histori-

cal incident in the school, and the younger boys looked up with a sort of respectful awe upon the boy who had defied a head-master, There were all sorts of speculations rife among them as to what Ned had done, there being a general opinion that he had probably killed Mr. Mul-ready, and the debate turning principally upon the manner in which this act of righteous vengeance had been performed.

There was, then, a feeling almost of disappointment when Ned walked into the playground looking much as usual, except that his face was pale and his eyes looked heavy and dull. No one asked him any questions; for although Ned was a general favourite, it was generally understood that he was not the sort of fellow to be asked questions that might put him out. When they went in school, and the first class was called up, Ned, who was always at its head, took his place at the bottom of the class, saying quietly to the master:

"I have not prepared my lesson to-day, sir, and I have not done the exercises."

Mr. Porson made no remark; he saw at once by Ned's face that something was wrong with him. When several questions went round, which Ned could easily have answered without preparation, the master said:

"You had better go to your desk, Sankey; I see you are not well. I will speak to you after school is over."

Ned sat down and opened a book, but he did not turn a page until school was over; then he followed his master to the study.

" Well, my boy," he asked kindly, "what is it?"

"My mother is going to marry Mr. Mulready," Ned said shortly. The words seemed to come with difficulty from his lips.

"Ah! it is true, then. I heard the report some weeks ago, but hoped that it was not true. I am sorry for you, Ned. I know it must be a sore trial for you; it is always so when anyone steps into the place of one we have loved and lost."

" I shouldn't care so much if it wasn't him," Ned said in a dull voice.

"But there's nothing against the man, is there?" Mr. Porson asked. "I own I do not like him myself; but I believe he stands well in the town."

" Only with those who don't know him," Ned replied; "his work-people say he is the worst master and the biggest tyrant in the district."

"We must hope it's not so bad as that, Ned; still, I am sorry—very sorry, at what you tell me; but, my boy, you must not take it to heart. You see you will be going-out into the world before long. Your brother will be following you in a few years. It is surely better that your mother should marry again and have someone to take care of her."

"Nice care of her he is likely to take!" Ned laughed bitterly. "You might as well put a fox to take care of a goose."

" You are severe on both parties," Mr. Porson said with a slight smile; "but I can hardly blame you, my boy, for

feeling somewhat bitter at first; but I hope that, for your own sake and your mother's, you will try and conquer this feeling and will make the best of the circumstances. It is worse than useless to kick against the pricks. Any show of hostility on your part will only cause unhappiness, perhaps between your mother and him—almost certainly between you and her. In this world, my boy, we have all our trials. Some are very heavy ones. This is yours. Happily, so far as you are concerned, you need only look forward to its lasting eighteen months or so. In that time you may hope to get your commission; and as the marriage can hardly take place for some little time to come, you will have but a year or so to bear it."

"I don't know, sir," Ned said gloomily; "everything seems upset now. I don't seem to know what I had best do."

" I am sure at present, Ned," Mr. Porson said kindly— for he saw that the boy was just now in no mood for argument—" the best is to try and think as little of it as possible. Make every allowance for your mother; as you know, my boy, I would not speak disrespectfully to you of her on any account; but she is not strong-minded. She has always been accustomed to lean upon someone, and the need of someone to lean on is imperative with her. Had you been a few years older, and had you been staying at home, it is probable that you might have taken your place as her support and strength. As it is, it was almost inevitable that something of this sort would happen.

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"But you know, Ned, where to look for strength and support. You have fought one hard battle, my boy, and have well-nigh conquered; now you have another before you. Seek for strength, my boy, where you will assuredly find it, and remember that this discipline is doubtless sent you for your good, and that it will be a preparation for you for the struggle in after life. I don't want you to be a thoughtless careless young officer, but a man earnest in doing his duty, and you cannot but see that these two trials must have a great effect in forming your character. Remember, Ned, that if the effect be not for good, it will certainly be for evil."

"I will try, sir," Ned said; "but I know it is easy to make good resolutions, and how it will be when he is in the house as master I can't trust myself even to think."

"Well, let us hope the best, Ned," Mr. Porson said kindly; "things may turn out better than you fear."

Then seeing that further talking would be useless now, he shook Ned's hand and let him go.

The next three or four months passed slowly and heavily. Ned went about his work again quietly and doggedly; but his high spirits seemed gone. His mother's engagement with Mr. Mulready had been openly announced, directly after he had first heard of it. Charlie had, to Ned's secret indignation, taken it quietly. He knew little of Mr. Mulready, who had, whenever he saw him, spoken kindly to him, and who now made him frequent presents of books and other things dear to schoolboys. Little Lucy's liking he had, however, failed to

gain, although in his frequent visits he had spared no pains to do so, seldom coming without bringing with him cakes or papers of sweets. Lucy accepted the presents, but did not love the donor, and confided to Abijah that his teeth were exactly like those of the wolf who ate Little Red Riding Hood.

Ned found much more comfort in her society during those dull days than in Charlie's. He had the good sense, however, never to encourage her in her expressions of dislike to Mr. Mulready, and even did his best to combat her impression, knowing how essential it was for her to get on well with him. Ned himself did not often see Mr. Mulready during that time. The first time that they met, Ned had, on his return from school, gone straight up into the drawing-room, not knowing that Mr. Mulready was there. On opening the door and seeing him he paused suddenly for a moment and then advanced. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Mr. Mulready said in his frankest manner:

" Ned, you have heard I am going to marry your mother. I don't suppose you quite like it; it wouldn't be natural if you did; I know I shouldn't if I were in your place. Still you know your disliking it won't alter it, and I hope we shall get on well together. Give me your hand, my lad, you won't find me a bad sort of fellow."

" I hope not," Ned said quietly, taking Mr. Mulready's hand and continuing to hold it while he went on: "I don't pretend I like it, and I know it makes no difference whether I do or not; the principal point is, that my

mother should be happy, and if you make her happy I have no doubt we shall, as you say, get on well together; if you don't, we shan't."

There was no mistaking the threat conveyed in Ned's steady tones, and Mr. Mulready, as Ned dropped his hand, felt that he should have more trouble with the boy than he had expected. He gave a forced laugh.

" One would think, Ned, that you thought it likely I was going to be unkind to your mother."

" No," Ned said quietly, " I don't want to think about it one way or the other, only I promised my father I would be kind to my mother; that means that I would look after her, and I mean to. Well, mother," he said in his usual tone, turning to Mrs. Sankey, "and how are you this morning?"

" I was feeling better, Ned," she said sharply; " but your unpleasant way of talking, and your nonsense about taking care of me, have made me feel quite ill again. Somehow you always seem to shake my nerves. You never seem to me like other boys. One would think I was a child instead of being your mother. I thought after what you said to me that you were going to behave nicely."

" I am trying to behave nicely," Ned said. " I am sure I meant quite nicely, just as Mr. Mulready does; I think he understands me."

" I don't understand that boy," Mrs. Sankey said plaintively when Ned had left the room, " and I never have understood him. He was dreadfully spoilt when he was

in India, as I have often told you; for in my weak state of health I was not equal to looking after him, and his poor father was sadly over-indulgent. But he has certainly been much better as to his temper lately, and I do hope, William, that he is not going to cause trouble."

" Oh, no!" Mr. Mulready said lightly, " he will not cause trouble; I have no doubt we shall get on well together. Boys will be boys, you know; I have been one myself, and of course they look upon stepfathers as natural enemies; but in this case, you see, we shall not have to put up with each other long, as he will be getting his commission in a year or so. Don't trouble yourself about it, love; in your state of health you ought really not to worry yourself, and worry, you know, spoils the eyes and the complexion, and I cannot allow that, for you will soon be my property now."

The wedding was fixed for March. It was to be perfectly quiet, as Mrs. Sankey would, up to the day, be still in mourning. A month before the time Ned noticed that his mother was more uncertain in her temper than usual, and Abijah confided to him in secret that she thought things were not going on smoothly between the engaged couple.

Nor were they. Mr. Mulready had discovered, to his surprise, that, indolent and silly as Mrs. Sankey was in many respects, she was not altogether a fool, and was keen enough where her own interests were concerned. He had suggested something about settlements, hoping that she would at once say that these were wholly un-

necessary; but to his surprise she replied in a manner which showed that she had already thought the matter over, and had very fixed ideas on the subject.

" Of course," she said, " that will be necessary. I know nothing about business, but it was done before, and my poor husband insisted that my little fortune should be settled so as to be entirely at my own disposal."

But this by no means suited Mr. Mulready's views. Hitherto want of capital had prevented his introducing the new machinery into his mills, and the competition with the firms which had already adopted it was injuring him seriously, and he had reckoned confidently upon the use of Mrs. Sankey's four thousand pounds. Although he kept his temper admirably under the circumstances, he gave her distinctly to understand, in the pleasantest way, that an arrangement which was most admirably suitable in every respect in the case of a lady marrying an officer in the army, to whom her capital could be of no possible advantage, was altogether unsuitable in the case of a manufacturer.

" You see, my love," he argued, " that it is for your benefit as well as mine that the business should grow and flourish by the addition of the new machinery which this little fortune of yours could purchase. The profits could be doubled and trebled, and we could look forward ere long to holding our heads as high as the richest manufacturers at Leeds and Bradford—while the mere interest of this money invested in consols as at present would be absolutely useless to us."

Mrs. Sankey acknowledged the force of his argument, but was firm in her determination to retain her hold of her money, and so they parted, not in anger, for Mr Mulready altogether disclaimed the possibility of his being vexed, but with the sense that something like a barrier had sprung up between them.

This went on for a few days, and although the subject was not mooted, Mrs. Sankey felt that unless some concession on her part was made it was likely that the match would fall through. This she had not the slightest idea of permitting, and rather than it should happen she would have married without any settlement at all, for she really loved, in her weak way, the man who had been so attentive and deferential to her.

So one day the subject was renewed, and at last an understanding was arrived at. Mrs. Sankey's money was to be put into the business in her own name. Should she not survive her husband, he was to have the option of paying the money to her children or of allowing them the sum of eighty pounds a year each from the business. Should he not survive her the mill was to be settled upon any children she might have after her marriage; should there be no children it was to be hers absolutely.

All this was only arrived at after several long discussions, in all of which Mrs. Sankey protested that she knew nothing of business, that it was most painful to her to be thus discussing money matters, and that it would be far better to leave it in the hands of a solicitor to arrange in a friendly manner with him. She never-

theless stuck to her views, and drove a bargain as keenly and shrewdly as any solicitor could have done for her, to the surprise and exasperation of Mr. Mulready. Had he known that she really loved him, and would, if she had been driven to it, have sacrificed everything rather than lose him, he could have obtained very different terms; but having no heart to speak of, himself, he was ignorant of the power he possessed over her.

Bankruptcy stared him in the face unless he could obtain this increase of capital, and he dared not, by pressing the point, risk its loss. The terms, he told himself, were not altogether unsatisfactory; it was not likely that she would survive him. They were of about the same age; he had never known what it was to be ill, and she, although not such an invalid as she fancied herself, was still not strong. If she did not survive him he would have the whole business, subject only to the paltry annuity of two hundred and forty pounds a year to the three children. If, the most unlikely thing in the world, she did survive him—well, it mattered not a jot in that case who the mill went to.

So the terms were settled, the necessary deeds were drawn up by a solicitor, and signed by both parties. Mrs. Sankey recovered her spirits, and the preparations for the wedding went on. Ned had intended to absent himself from the ceremony, but Mr. Porson, guessing that such might be his intention, had talked the matter gravely over with him. He had pointed out to Ned that his absence would in the first place be an act of great disre-

spect to his mother; that in the second place it would cause general comment, and would add to the unfavour-able impression which his mother's early re-marriage had undoubtedly created; and that, lastly, it would justify Mr. Mulready in regarding him as hostile to the marriage, and, should trouble subsequently arise, he would be able to point to it in self-justification, and as a proof that Ned had from the first determined to treat him as an enemy.

So Ned was present at his mother's marriage. Quiet as the wedding was, for only two or three acquaintances were asked to be present, the greater part of Marsden were assembled in the church.

The marriage had created considerable comment. The death of Captain Sankey in saving a child's life had rendered his widow an object of general sympathy, and people felt that not only was this marriage within eighteen months of Captain Sankey's death almost indecent, but that it was somehow a personal wrong to them, and that they had been defrauded in their sympathy.

Therefore the numerous spectators of the marriage were critical rather than approving. They could find nothing to find fault with, however, in the bride's appearance. She was dressed in a dove-coloured silk, and with her fair hair and pale complexion looked quite young, and, as everyone admitted, pretty. Mr. Mulready, as usual, was smiling, and seemed to convey by the looks which he cast round that he regarded the assemblage as a personal compliment to himself.

Lucy and Charlie betrayed no emotion either way; they were not pleased, but the excitement of the affair amused and interested them, and they might be said to be passive spectators. Ned, however, although he had brought himself to be present, could not bring himself to look as if the ceremony had his approval or sanction. He just glared, as Abijah, who was present, afterwards confided to some of her friends, as if he could have killed the man as he stood. His look of undisguised hostility was indeed noticed by all who were in church, and counted heavily against him in the days which were to come.

•^rt* 3 -

r^p

CHAPTER X.

TROUBLES AT HOME.

T was not one of the least griefs of the young Sankeys connected with their mother's wedding that Abijah was to leave them. It was she herself who had given notice to Mrs. Sankey, saying that she would no longer be required-The first time that she had spoken of her intention, Mrs. Sankey vehemently combated the idea, saying that neither she nor Lucy could spare her; but she did not afterwards return to the subject, and seemed to consider it a settled thing that Abijah intended to leave. Mrs. Sankey had, in fact, spoken to Mr. Mulready on the subject, but instead of taking the view she had expected he had said cheerfully:

" I am glad that she has given notice. I know that she is a valuable woman and much attached to you. At the same time these old servants always turn out a mistake under changed circumstances. She would never have been comfortable or contented. She has, my dear, if I may say so, been mistress too long, and as I intend you

to be mistress of my house, it is much better that she should go."

As Mrs. Sankey had certain doubts herself as to whether Abijah would be a success in the new home, the subject was dropped, and it became an understood thing that Abijah would leave after the wedding.

The newly married couple were absent for three weeks. Until two days before their return Abijah remained in the old house with the young Sankeys; then they moved into their new home, and she went off to her native village ten miles distant away on the moors. The next day there was a sale at the old house. A few, a very few, of the things had been moved. Everything else was sold, to the deep indignation of Ned, who was at once grieved and angry that all the articles of furniture which he associated with his father should be parted with. Abijah shared the boy's feelings in this respect, and at the sale all the furniture and fittings of Captain Sankey's study were bought by a friendly grocer on her behalf, and the morning after the sale a badly written letter, for Abijah's education had been neglected, was placed in Ned's hand.

" My dear Master Ned,—Knowing as it cut you to the heart that everything should go away into the hands of strangers, I have made so bold as to ask Mr. Willcox for to buy all the furniter and books in maister's study. He is agoing to stow them away in a dry loft, and when so bee as you gets a home of your own there they is for you; they are sure not to fetch much, and when you gets a rich man you can pay me for them; not as that matters at all

one way or the other. I have been a saving up pretty nigh all my wages from the day as you was born, and is quite comfortable off. Write me a letter soon, dearie, to tell me as how things is going on. Your affectionate nurse— Abijah Wolf."

Although Ned was a lad of sixteen, he had a great cry over this letter, but it did him good, and it was with a softer heart that he prepared to receive his mother and her husband that evening.

The meeting passed off better than he had anticipated. Mrs. Mulready was really affected at seeing her children again, and embraced them, Ned thought, with more fondness than she had done when they went away. Mr. Mulready spoke genially and kindly, and Ned began to hope that things would not be so bad after all.

The next morning, to his surprise, his mother appeared at breakfast, a thing which he could not remember that she had ever done before, and yet the hour was an early one, as her husband wanted to be off to the mill. During the meal Mr. Mulready spoke sharply two or three times, and it seemed to Ned that his mother was nervously anxious to please him.

" Things are not going on so well after all," he said to himself as he walked with his brother to school. "Mother has changed already; I can see that she isn't a bit like herself. There she was fussing over whether he had enough sugar with his tea, and whether the kidneys were done enough for him; then her coming down to breakfast was wonderful. I expect she has found already that

somebody else's will besides her own has got to be consulted ; it's pretty soon for her to have begun to learn the lesson."

It was very soon manifest that Mr. Mulready was master in his own house. He still looked pleasant and smiled, for his smile was a habitual one; but there was a sharpness in the ring of his voice, an impatience if everything was not exactly as he wished. He roughly silenced Charlie and Lucy if they spoke when he was reading his paper at breakfast, and he spoke snappishly to his wife when she asked him a question on such occasions. Ned felt his face burn as with his eyes on his plate he continued his meal. To him Mr. Mulready seldom spoke unless it was absolutely necessary.

Ned often caught himself wondering over the change which had taken place in his mother. All the ways and habits of an invalid had disappeared. She not only gave directions for the management of the house, but looked after everything herself, and was for ever going up stairs and down seeing that everything was properly done. However sharply Mr. Mulready spoke she never replied in the same tone. A little flush of colour would come into her cheek, but she would pass it off lightly, and at all times she appeared nervously anxious to please him. Ned wondered much over the change.

" He is a tyrant," he said, " and she has learned it already; but I do think she loves him. Fancy my mother coming to be the slave of a man like this! I suppose," he laughed bitterly, " it's the story of ' a woman, a dog, and a walnut

tree, the more you thrash them the better they will be.' My father spent his whole life in making hers easy, and in sparing her from every care and trouble, and I don't believe she cared half as much for him as she does for this man who is her master."

For some months Mr. Mulready was very busy at his mill. A steam-engine was being erected, new machinery brought in, and he was away the greater part of his time superintending it.

One day at breakfast, a short time before all was in readiness for a start with the new plant, Mr. Mulready opened a letter directed in a sprawling and ill-written hand which lay at the top of the pile by his plate. Ned happened to notice his face, and saw the colour fade out from it as he glanced at the contents. The mouth remained as usual, set in a smile, but the rest of the face expressed agitation and fear. The hand which held the letter shook. Mrs. Mulready, whose eyes seldom left her husband's face when he was in the room, also noticed the change.

"Is anything the matter, William?"

" Oh! nothing," he said with an unnatural laugh, " only a little attempt to frighten me."

" An attempt which has succeeded," Ned said to himself, " whatever it is."

Mr. Mulready passed the letter over to his wife. It was a rough piece of paper; at the top was scrawled the outline of a coffin, underneath which was written:

" Mr. Mulready,—Sir, this is to give you warning that if

you uses the new machinery you are a dead man. You have been a marked man for a long time for your tyrannical ways, but as long as you didn't get the new machinery we let you live; but we has come to the end of it now; the day as you turns on steam we burns your mill to the ground and shoots you, so now you knows it."

At the bottom of this was signed the words " Captain Lud."

" Oh! William,*" Mrs. Mulready cried, " you will never do it! You will never risk your life at the hands of these terrible people!"

All the thin veneer of politeness was cracked by this blow, and Mr. Mulready said sullenly:

"Nice thing indeed; after I have married to get this money, and then not to be able to use it!"

His wife gave a little cry.

" It's a shame to say so," Charlie burst out sturdily.

Mr. Mulready's passion found a vent. He leaped up and seized the boy by the collar and boxed his ears with all his force.

In an instant the fury which had been smouldering in Ned's breast for months found a vent. He leaped to his feet and struck Mr. Mulready a blow between the eyes which sent him staggering back against the wall; then he caught up the poker. The manufacturer with a snarl like that of an angry wild beast was about to rush at him, but Ned's attitude as he stood, poker in hand, checked him.

" Stand back," Ned said threateningly, " or I will strike you. You coward and bully; for months I have put up

with your tyrannizing over Charlie and Lucy, but touch either of them again if you dare. You think that you are stronger than I am—so you are ever so much; but you lay a finger on them or on me, and I warn you, if I wait a month for an opportunity I will pay you for it, if you kill me afterwards."

Mrs. Mulready's screams had by this time brought the servants into the room, and they stood astonished at the spectacle.

Lucy crying bitterly had run to Ned and thrown her arms round him, begging him to be quiet. Charlie, hardly recovered from the heavy blows he had received, was crying too. Mr, Mulready as pale as death was glaring at Ned, while his wife had thrown herself between them. Mr. Mulready was the first to recover himself.

" This is a nice spectacle," he said to the servants. " You see that boy has attacked me with the poker and might have murdered me. However, you can go now, and mind no chattering about what you have seen. And now," he continued to Ned as the door closed behind the servants, "out of this house you go this day."

" You don't suppose I want to stay in your house," Ned said passionately. " You don't suppose that it's any pleasure to me to stop here, seeing you play the tyrant over my mother."

" Oh, Ned, Ned," Mrs. Mulready broke in, " how can you talk so!"

" It is true, mother, he is a tyrant to you as well as to everyone else; but I don't mean to go, I mean to stop here

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to protect you and the children. He daren't turn me out; if he did, I would go and work in one of the mills, and what would the people of Marsden say then ? What would they think of this popular pleasant gentleman then, who has told his wife before her children that he married her for her money? They shall all know it, never fear, if I leave this house. I would have gone to Mr. Simmonds and asked him to apply for a commission for me before now, for other fellows get it as young as I am; but I have made up my mind that it's my duty not to do so. I know he has been looking forward to my being out of the way, and his being able to do just what he likes with the others, but I ain't going to gratify him. It's plain to me that my duty at present is to take care of you all, and though God knows how I set my mind upon going into the army and being a soldier like my father, I will give it up if it means leaving Charlie here under him."

"And do you suppose, sir," Mr. Mulready asked with intense bitterness, "that I am going to keep you here doing nothing all your life, while you are pleased to watch me?"

"No, I don't," Ned replied. "I shall get a clerkship or something in one of the mills, and I shall have Charlie to live with me until he is old enough to leave school, and then I will go away with him to America or somewhere. As to mother, I can do nothing for her. I think my being here makes it worse for her, for I believe you tyrannize over her all the more because you think it

hurts me. I know you hated me from the first, just as I hated you. As for Lucy, mother must do the best she can for her. Even you daren't hit a girl."

"Oh Ned, how can you go on so!" Mrs. Mulready wailed. "You are a wicked boy to talk so."

"All right, mother," Ned replied recklessly; "if I am, I suppose I am. I know in your eyes he can do no wrong. And I believe if he beat you, you would think that you deserved it." So he flung himself down in his chair and continued his breakfast.

Mr. Mulready drank off his tea without sitting down, and then left the room without another word; in fact, as yet he did not know what to say.

Almost speechless with passion as he was he restrained himself from carrying out his threat and turning Ned at once from the house. Above all things he prized his position and popularity, and he felt that, as Ned had said, he would indeed incur a heavy odium by turning his wife's son from his doors. Captain Sankey's death had thrown almost a halo over his children. Mr. Mulready knew that he was already intensely unpopular among the operative class, but he despised this so long as he stood well with the rest of the townsmen; but he dared not risk Ned's going to work as an ordinary hand in one of the factories; public opinion is always against stepfathers, and assuredly this would be no exception. Hating him as he did, he dared not get rid of this insolent boy, who had struck and defied him. He cursed himself now with his rashness in letting his temper get the best of him and telling his wife

openly that he had married her for her money; for this in Ned's hands would be a serious weapon against him.

That his wife's feelings were hurt he cared not a jot, but it would be an awkward thing to have it repeated in the town. Then there was this threatening letter; what was he to do about that? Other men had had similar warnings. Some had defied Captain Lud, and fortified their mills and held them. Many had had their property burned to the ground; some had been murdered. It wouldn't be a pleasant thing to drive about in the country knowing that at any moment he might be shot dead. His mill was some little distance out of the town; the road was dark and lonely. He dared not risk it.

Mr. Mulready was, like all tyrants, a coward at heart, and his face grew white again as he thought of the letter in his pocket. In the meantime Mrs. Mulready was alternately sobbing and upbraiding Ned as he quietly finished his breakfast. The boy did not answer, but continued his meal in dogged silence, and when it was over collected his books and without a word went off to school.

Weeks went on, and no outward change took place. Ned continued to live at home. Mr. Mulready never addressed him, and beyond helping him to food entirely ignored his presence. At meal-times when he opened his lips it was either to snap at Charlie or Lucy, or to snarl at his wife, whose patience astonished Ned, and who never answered except by a smile or murmured excuse. The lad was almost as far separated from her now as from his stepfather. She treated him as if he only were to blame for

the quarrel which had arisen. They had never understood each other, and while she was never weary o£ making-excuses for her husband, she could make none for her son. In the knowledge that the former had much to vex him she made excuses for him even in his worst moods. His new machinery was standing idle, his business was getting worse and worse, he was greatly pressed and worried, and it was monstrous, she told herself, that at such a time he should be troubled with Ned's defiant behaviour.

A short time before the school Christmas holidays Ned knocked at the door of Mr. Porson's study. Since the conversation which they had had when first Ned heard of his mother's engagement Mr. Porson had seen in the lad's altered manner, his gloomy looks, and a hardness of expression which became more and more marked every week, that things were going on badly. Ned no longer evinced the same interest in his work, and frequently neglected it altogether; the master, however, had kept silence, preferring to wait until Ned should himself broach the subject.

"Well, Sankey, what is it?" he asked kindly as the boy entered.

"I don't think it's any use my going on any longer, Mr. Porson."

"Well, Sankey, you have not been doing yourself much good this half, certainly. I have not said much to you about it, for it is entirely your own business: you know more than nineteen out of twenty of the young fellows who get commissions, so that if you choose to give up work it is your own affair."

"I have made up my mind not to go into the army," Ned said quietly. Mr. Porson was silent a minute.

"I hope, my dear lad," he said, "you will do nothing hastily about this. Here is a profession open to you which is your own choice and that of your father, and it should need some very strong and good reason for you to abandon it. Come let us talk the matter over together, my boy, not as a master and his pupil, but as two friends.

"You know, my boy, how thoroughly I have your interest at heart. If you had other friends whom you could consult I would rather have given you no advice, for there is no more serious matter than to say anything which might influence the career of a young fellow just starting in life. Terrible harm often results from well-intentioned advice or opinions carelessly expressed to young men by their elders; it is a matter which few men are sufficiently careful about; but as I know that you have no friends to consult, Ned, and as I regard you with more than interest, I may say with affection, I think it would be well for you to tell me all that there is in your mind before you take a step which may wreck your whole life.

" I have been waiting for some months in hopes that you would open your mind to me, for I have seen that you were unhappy; but it was not for me to force your confidence."

" I don't know that there's much to tell," Ned said wearily. " Everything has happened just as it was certain it would do. Mulready is a brute; he ill-treats my

mother, he ill-treats Charlie and Lucy, and he would ill-treat me if he dared."

"All this is bad, Ned," Mr. Porson said gravely; "but of course much depends upon the amount of his ill-treatment. I assume that he does not actively ill-treat your mother."

"No," Ned said with an angry look in his face; "and he'd better not."

"Yes, Ned, he had better not, no doubt," Mr. Porson said soothingly; "but what I want to know, what it is essential I should know if I am to give you any advice worth having, is what you mean by ill-treatment—is he rough and violent in his way with her ? does he threaten her with violence? is he coarse and brutal ?"

" No," Ned said somewhat reluctantly; "he is not that, sir; he is always snapping and snarling and finding-fault."

" That is bad, Ned, but it does not amount to ill-treatment. When a man is put out in business and things go wrong with him it is unhappily too often his custom to vent his ill-temper upon innocent persons; and I fancy from what I hear—you know in a little place like this everyone's business is more or less known—Mr. Mulready has a good deal to put him out. He has erected new machinery and dare not put it to work, owing, as I hear —for he has laid the documents before the magistrates— to his having received threatening letters warning him against doing so. This is very trying to the man. Then, Ned, you will excuse my saying that perhaps he is some-

what tried at home. It is no pleasant thing for a man to have a young fellow like yourself in the house taking up an attitude of constant hostility. I do not say that his conduct may or may not justify it; but you will not deny that from the first you were prepared to receive him as an enemy rather than as a friend. I heard a story some weeks ago in the town, which emanated no doubt from the servants, that you had actually struck him."

" He hit Charlie, sir," Ned exclaimed.

"That may be," Mr. Porson went on gravely; "and I have no doubt, Ned, that you considered then, and that you consider now, that you were acting rightly in interfering on behalf of your brother. But I should question much whether in such a matter you are the best judge. You unfortunately began with a very strong prejudice against this man; you took up the strongest attitude of hostility to him; you were prepared to find fault with everything he said and did; you put yourself in the position of the champion of your mother, brother, and sister against him. Under such circumstances it was hardly possible that things could go on well. Now I suppose, Ned, that the idea which you have in your mind in deciding to give up the profession you have chosen, is that you may remain as their champion and protector here."

"Yes, sir," Ned said. " Father told me to be kind to mother, whatever happened."

" Quite so, my boy; but the question is, Are you being kind ?"

Ned looked surprised.

" That you intend to be so, Ned, I am sure. The question is, Are you going the right way to work? Is this championship that you have taken upon yourself increasing her happiness, or is it not ?"

Ned was silent.

" I do not think that it is, Ned. Your mother must be really fond of this man or she would not have married him. Do you think that it conduces to the comfort of her home to see the constant antagonism which prevails between you and him ? Is it not the fact that this ill-temper under which she suffers is the result of the irritation caused to him by your attitude? Do you not add to her burden rather than relieve it ?"

Ned was still silent. He had so thoroughly persuaded himself that he was protecting his mother, his brother, and sister from Mr. Mulready that he had never considered the matter in this light.

"Does your mother take his part or yours in these quarrels, Ned ?"

" She takes his part, sir," said Ned indignantly.

"Very well, Ned; that shows in itself that she does not wish for your championship, that in her eyes the trouble in the house is in fact caused by you. You must remember that when a woman loves a man she makes excuses for his faults of temper; his irritable moods, sharp expressions, and what you call snapping and snarling do not seem half so bad to her as they do to a third person, especially when that third person is her partisan. Instead of your adding to her happiness by renouncing

your idea of going into the army, and of deciding to remain here in some position or other to take care of her, as, I suppose, is your intention, the result will be just the contrary. As to your sister, I think the same thing would happen.

" Your mother is certainly greatly attached to her; and owing to her changed habits—for I understand that she is now a far more active, and I may say, Ned, a more sensible woman than before her marriage—I see no reason why Lucy should not be happy with her, especially if the element of discord—I mean yourself—were out of the way. As to Charlie, at the worst I don't think that he would suffer from your absence. His stepfather's temper will be less irritable; and as Charlie is away at school all day, and has to prepare his lessons in the evening, there is really but slight opportunity for his stepfather treating him with any active unkindness, even should he be disposed to do so.

"Did I think, my boy, that your presence here would be likely to benefit your family I should be the last person to advise you to avoid making a sacrifice of your private wishes to what you consider your duty; but upon the contrary I am convinced that the line which you have, with the best intention, taken up has been altogether a mistake, that your stay at home does vastly more harm than good, and that things would go on very much better in your absence."

This was a bitter mortification for Ned, who had hitherto nursed the idea that he was performing rather

a heroic part, and was sacrificing himself for the sake of his mother,

"You don't know the fellow as I do," he said sullenly at last.

"I do not, Ned; but I know human nature, and I know that any man would show himself at his worst under such circumstances as those in which you have placed him. It is painful to have to say, but I am sure that you have done harm rather than good, and that things will get on much better in your absence."

" I believe he is quite capable of killing her," Ned said passionately, " if he wanted her out of the way."

"That is a hard thing to say, Ned; but even were it so, we have no reason for supposing that he does want her out of the way. Come, Sankey, I am sure you have plenty of good sense. Hitherto you have been acting rather blindly in this matter. You have viewed it from one side only, and with the very best intentions in the world have done harm rather than good.

" I am convinced that when you come to think it over you will see that, in following out your own and your father's intentions and wishes as to your future career you will really best fulfil his last injunctions and will show the truest kindness to your mother. Don't give me any answer now, but take time to think it over. Try and see the case from every point of view, and I think you will come to the conclusion that what I have been saying, although it may seem rather hard to you at first, is true, and that you had best go into the army, as you had

intended. I am sure in any case you will know that what I have said, even if it seems unkind, has been for your good."

"Thank you, Mr. Porson," Ned replied; "I am quite sure of that. Perhaps you are right, and I have been making a fool of myself all along. But anyhow I will think it over."

,*-#-»)•

CHAPTER XL

THE NEW MACHINERY.

T is rather hard for a lad who thinks that he has been behaving somewhat as a hero to come to the conclusion that he has been making a fool of himself; but this was the result of Ned Sankey's cogitation over what Mr. Porson had said to him. Perhaps he arrived more easily at that conclusion because he was not altogether unwilling to do so. It was very mortifying to allow that he had been altogether wrong; but, on the other hand, there was a feeling of deep pleasure at the thought that he could, in Mr. Por-son's deliberate opinion, go into the army and carry out all his original hopes and plans. His heart had been set upon this as long as he could remember, and it had been a bitter disappointment to him when he had arrived at the conclusion that it was his duty to abandon the idea. He did not now come to the conclusion hastily that Mr. Porson's view of the case was the correct one; but after a fortnight's consideration he went down on New Year's-day to the school, and told his master that he had made up his mind.

" I see, sir," he said, " now that I have thought it all over, that you are quite right, and that I have been behaving like an ass, so I shall set to work again and try and make up the lost time. I have only six months longer, for Easter is the time when Mr. Simmonds said that I should be old enough, and he will write to the lord-lieutenant, and I suppose that in three months after that I should get my commission."

" That is right, Ned. I am exceedingly glad you have been able to take my view of the matter. I was afraid you were bent upon spoiling your life, and I am heartily glad that you have been able to see the matter in a different light."

A day or two afterwards Ned took an opportunity of telling his mother that he intended at Easter to remind Mr. Simmonds of his promise to apply for a commission for him; and had he before had any lingering doubt that the decision was a wise one it would have been dissipated by the evident satisfaction and relief with which the news was received; nevertheless, he could not help a feeling of mortification at seeing; in his mother's face the gladness which the prospect of his leaving occasioned her.

It was some time since Ned had seen his friend Bill Swinton, for Bill was now regularly at work in Mr. Mul-ready's factory and was only to be found at home in the evening, and Ned had been in no humour for going out. He now, however, felt inclined for a friendly talk again, and the next Sunday afternoon he started for Varley.

"Well, Maister Ned," Bill said as he hurried to the

door in answer to his knock, " it be a long time surely sin oi saw thee last—well-nigh six months, I should say."

" It is a long time, Bill, but I haven't been up to anything, even to coming up here. Put on your cap and we will go for a walk across the moors together."

In a few seconds Bill joined him, and they soon left the village behind.

" Oi thought as how thou didn't feel oop to talking loike, Maister Ned. Oi heared tell as how thou did'st not get on well wi' Foxey; he be a roight down bad un, he be; it were the talk of the place as how you gived him a clout atween t' eyes, and oi laughed rarely to myself when oi seed him come through t' mill wi' black and blue all round 'em. There warn't a hand there but would have given a week's pay to have seen it done."

" I am afraid I was wrong, Bill," Ned said, feeling ashamed rather than triumphant at the thought. " I oughtn't to have done it, but my beastly temper got the best of it."

" Doan't say that, Maister Ned; he deserves ten toimes worse nor you gived him, and he will get it some time if he doan't mind. Oi tell ee there be lots of talk of him, and Captain Lud's gang be a getting stronger and stronger. Oi tell ye, t' maisters be agoing to have a bad time on it afore long, and Foxey be sure to be one of the first served out."

" Well, don't you have anything to do with it, Bill. You know I have told you over and over again that no

good can come of such bad doings, and that the men will only make matters much worse for themselves. My father used to say that no good ever came of mob violence. They may do some harm for a time, but it is sure to recoil on their own heads."

" Oi doan't ha' nowt to do wi' it," Bill replied, "cause oi told yer oi wouldn't; but oi've some trouble to keep oot o't. Ye see oi am nointeen now, and most o' t' chaps o' moi age they be in't; they meet at the 'Dog' nigh every noight, and they drills regular out on t' moor here, and it doan't seem natural for oi not to be in it, especial as moi brothers be in it. They makes it rough for me in t' village, and says as how I ain't got no spirit, and even t' girls laughs at me."

" Not Polly Powlett, I am sure, Bill."

" No, not Polly," Bill replied. " She be a different sort. A' together it be a bit hard, and it be well for me as oi'm main strong and tough, for oi ha' to right pretty nigh every Saturday. However, oi ha' thrashed pretty nigh every young chap in Varley, and they be beginning now to leave oi alone."

" That's right, Bill; I am sure I have no right to preach to you when I am always doing wrong myself; still I am quite sure you will be glad in the long run that you had nothing to do with King Lud. I know the times are very hard, but burning mills and murdering masters are not the way to make them better; you take my word for that. And now how are things going on in Varley?"

"No great change here," Bill replied. "Polly Powlett

bain't made up her moind yet atween t' chaps as is arter her. They say as she sent John Stukeley, the smith, to the roight about last Sunday; he ha' been arter her vor the last year. Some thowt she would have him, some didn't. He ha' larning, you see, can read and wroite foine, and ha' got a smooth tongue, and knows how to talk to gals, so some thought she would take him; oi knew well enough she wouldn't do nowt of the koind, for oi ha' heard her say he were a mischievous chap, and a cuss to Varley. Thou know'st, Maister Ned, they do say, but in course oi knows nowt about it, as he be the head of the Luddites in this part of Yorkshire.

" Luke Marner he be dead against Kino- Lud, he be, and so be many of the older men here; it's most the young uns as takes to them ways; and nateral, Polly she thinks as Luke does, or perhaps," and Bill laughed, " it's Polly as thowt that way first, and Luke as thinks as she does. However it be, she be dead set agin them, and she's said to me jest the same thing as thou'st been a-saying; anyhow, it be sartin as Polly ha' said no to John Stukeley, not as she said nowt about it, and no one would ha' known aboot it ef he hadn't gone cussing and swearino-down at the 'Do^.'

" I thinks, Maister Ned, as we shall ha' trouble afore long. The men ha' been drilling four or five years now, and oi know as they ha' been saying, What be the good of it when nowt be done and the wao*es gets lower and lower? They have preachments now out on t' moor on Sundays, and the men comes from miles round, and they

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tells me as Stukeley and others, but him chiefly, goes on awful agin t' maisters, and says, There's Scripture vor it as they owt to smite 'em, and as how tyrants owt vor to be hewed in pieces."

"The hewing would not be all on one side, Bill, you will see, if they begin it. You know how easily the soldiers have put down riots in other places."

" That be true," Bill said; " but they doan't seem vor to see it. Oi don't say nowt one way or t' other, and oi have had more nor half a mind to quit and go away till it's over. What wi' my brothers and all t' other young chaps here being in it, it maaks it moighty hard vor oi to stand off; only as oi doan't know what else vor to do, oi would go. Oi ha' been a-thinking that when thou get'st to be an officer oi'll list in the same regiment and go to the wars wi' thee. Oi am sick of this loife here."

" Well, Bill, there will be no difficulty about that if you really make up your mind to it when the time comes. Of course I should like to have you very much. I have heard my father say that each officer has a soldier as his special servant; and if you would like that, you see, when we were alone together we should be able to talk about Varley and everything here just as we do now. Then I suppose I could help you on and get you made first a corporal and then a sergeant."

" Very well, Maister Ned, then we will look on that as being as good as settled, and as soon as thou gets to be an officer oi will go as one of your soldiers."

For an hour they walked across the moor, talking about

a soldier's life, Ned telling of the various parts of the world in which England was at that time engaged in war, and wondering in which of them they would first see service. Then they came back to the village and there parted, and Ned, feeling in better spirits than he had been from the day when he first heard of his mother's engagement to Mr. Mulready, walked briskly down to Marsden.

For a time matters went on quietly. Few words were exchanged between Ned and Mr. Mulready; and although the latter could not but have noticed that Ned was brighter and more cheerful in his talk, he was brooding over his own trouble, and paid but little heed to it.

The time was fast approaching when he could no longer go on as at present. The competition with the mills using the new machinery was gradually crushing him, and it was necessary for him to come to a determination either to pluck up heart and to use his new machines, or to close his mill.

At last he determined to take the former course and to defy King Lud. Other manufacturers used steam, and why should not he? It was annoying to him in the extreme that his friends and acquaintances, knowing that he had fitted the mill with the new plant, were always asking him why he did not use it.

A sort of uneasy consciousness that he was regarded by his townsmen as a coward was constantly haunting him. He knew in his heart that his danger was greater than that of others, because he could not rely on his men. Other masters had armed their hands, and had turned their fac-

tories into strong places, some of them even getting down cannon for their defence; for, as a rule, the hands employed with the new machinery had no objection to it, for they were able to earn larger wages with less bodily toil than before.

The hostility was among the hands thrown out of employment, or who found that they could now no longer make a living by the looms which they worked in their own houses. Hitherto Mr. Mulready had cared nothing for the good-will of his hands. He had simply regarded them as machines from whom the greatest amount of work was to be obtained at the lowest possible price. They might grumble and curse him beneath their breaths; they might call him a tyrant behind his back, for this he cared nothing; but he felt now that it would have been better had their relations been different; for then he could have trusted them to do their best in defence of the mill.

Having once determined upon defying King Lud, Mr. Mulready went before the magistrates, and laying before them the threatening letters he had received, for the first had been followed by many others, he asked them to send for a company of infantry, as he was going to set his mill to work. The magistrates after some deliberation agreed to do so, and wrote to the commanding officer of the troops at Huddersfield asking him to station a detachment at Marsden for a time.

The request was complied with. A company of infantry marched in and were billeted upon the town. A room was fitted up at the mill, and ten of them were

quartered here, and upon the day after their arrival the new machinery started.

Now that the step was taken, Mr. Mulready's spirits rose. He believed that the presence of the soldiers was ample protection for the mill, and he hoped that ere they left the town the first excitement would have cooled down, and the Luddites have turned their attention to other quarters

Ned met Bill on the following Sunday.

: 'I suppose, Bill," he said, "there is a rare stir about Foxey using his new machinery?"

" Ay, that there be, and no wonder," Bill said angrily, "there be twenty hands turned adrift. Oi bee one of them myself."

" You, Bill! I had no idea you had been discharged."

"Ay; oi have got the sack, and so ha' my brother and young Jarge Marner, and most o' t' young chaps in the mill. Oi suppose as how Foxey thinks as the old hands will stick to t' place, and is more afeerd as the young uns might belong to Kino; Lud, and do him a bad turn with the machinery Oi tell ye, Maister Ned, that the sooner as you goes as an officer the better, vor oi caan't bide here now and hold off from the others. Oi have had a dog's loife for some time, and it ull be worse now. It would look as if oi hadn't no spirit in the world, to stand being put upon and not join the others. T other chaps scarce speak to me, and the gals turn their backs as oi pass them. Oi be willing vor to be guided by you as far as oi can; but it bain't in nature to stand this. Oi'd as lief

go and hang myself. Oi would go and list to-morrow, only oi don't know what regiment you are going to."

" Well, Bill, it is hard," Ned said, "and I am not surprised that you feel that you cannot stand it; but it won't be for long now. Easter will be here in a fortnight, and then I shall see Mr. Simmonds and get him to apply at once. I met him in the street only last week, and he was talking about it then. He thinks that it will not be long after he sends in an application before I get my commission. He says he has got interest in London at the Horse Guards, and will get the application of the lord lieutenant backed up there; so I hope that in a couple of months at latest it will all be settled."

" Oi hope so, oi am sure, vor oi be main sick of this. However, oi can hold on for another couple of months; they know anyhow as it ain't from cowardice as I doan't join them. I fowt Jack Standfort yesterday and licked un; though, as you see, oi 'ave got a rare pair of black eyes to-day. If oi takes one every Saturday it's only eight more to lick, and oi reckon oi can do that."

" I w ish I could help you, Bill," Ned said; " if father had been alive I am sure he would have let you have a little money to take you away from here and keep you somewhere until it is time for you to enlist; but you see I can do nothing now."

"Doan't you go vor to trouble yourself aboot me, Maister Ned. Oi shall hold on roight enow. The thought as it is for two months longer will keep me up. Oi can spend moi evenings in at Luke's. He goes off to the 'Coo;' but

Polly doan't moind moi sitting there and smoking moi pipe, though it bain't every one as she would let do that."

Ned laughed. " It's a pity, Bill, you are not two or three years older, then perhaps Polly mightn't give you the same answer she gave to the smith."

" Lor' bless ee," Bill said seriously, " Polly wouldn't think nowt of oi, not if oi was ten years older. Oi bee about the same age as she; but she treats me as if I was no older nor her Jarge. No, when Polly marries it won't be in Varley. She be a good many cuts above us, she be. Oi looks upon her jest as an elder sister, and oi doan't moint how much she blows me up—and she does it pretty hot sometimes, oi can tell ee; but oi should just loike to hear anyone say a word agin her; but theere no one in Varley would do that. Every one has a good word for Polly; for when there's sickness in the house, or owt be wrong, Polly's always ready to help. Oi do believe that there never was such a gal. If it hadn't been for her oi would ha' cut it long ago. Oi wouldn't go agin what ye said, Maister Ned; but oi am danged if oi could ha' stood it ef it hadn't been for Polly."

" I suppose," Ned said, " that now they have got the soldiers down in Marsden it will be all right about the mill."

"Oi caan't say," Bill replied; "nateral they doan't say nowt to me; but oi be sure that some'ats oop. They be a-drilling every night, and there will be trouble avore long. Oi doan't believe as they will venture to attack the

mill as long as the sojers be in Marsden; but oi wouldn't give the price of a pint of ale for Foxey's loife ef they could lay their hands on him. He'd best not come up this way arter dark."

" He's not likely to do that," Ned said. " I am sure he is a coward or he would have put the mill to work weeks ago."

Secure in the protection of the troops, and proud of the new machinery which was at work in his mill, Mr. Mul-ready was now himself again. His smile had returned. He carried himself jauntily, and talked lightly and contemptuously of the threats of King Lud. Ned disliked him more in this mood than in the state of depression and irritation which had preceded it. The tones of hatred and contempt in which he spoke of the starving workmen jarred upon him greatly, and it needed all his determination and self-command to keep him from expressing his feelings. Mr. Mulready was quick in perceiving, from the expression of Ned's face, the annoyance which his remarks caused him, and reverted to the subject all the more frequently. With this exception, the home life was more pleasant than it had been before.

Mr. Mulready, in his satisfaction at the prospect of a new prosperity, was far more tolerant with his wife, and her spirits naturally rose with his. She had fully shared his fears as to the threats by the Luddites, and now agreed cordially with his diatribes against the workpeople, adopting all his opinions as her own.

Ned's acquaintance with Bill Swinton had long been a

grievance to her, and her constant complainings as to his love for low company had been one of the afflictions to which Ned had long been accustomed. Now, having her husband by her side, it was a subject to which she frequently reverted.

"Why can't you leave me alone, mother?" Ned burst out one day when Mr. Mulready had left the room. " Can't you leave me in quiet as to my friends, when in two or three months I shall be going away? Bill Swinton is going to enlist in the same regiment in which I am, so as to follow me all over the world.

" Would any of the fine friends you would like me to make do that ? I like all the fellows at school well enough, but there is not one of them would do a fiftieth part as much for me as Bill would. Even you, mother, with all your prejudices, must allow that it will be a good thing for me to have some one with me who will really care for me, who will nurse me if I am sick or wounded, who would lay down his life for mine if necessary. I tell you there isn't a finer fellow than Bill living. Of course he's rough, and he's had no education, I know that; but it's not his fault. But a truer or warmer-hearted fellow never lived. He is a grand fellow. I wish I was only half as true and as honest and manly as he is. I am proud to have Bill as a friend. It won't be long before I have gone, mother. I have been fighting hard with myself so that there shall be peace and quietness in the house for the little time I have got to be here, and you make it harder for me."

" It's ridiculous your talking so," Mrs. Mulready said peevishly, " and about a common young fellow like this. I don't pretend to understand you, Ned. I never have, and never shall do. But I am sure the house will be much more comfortable when you have gone. Whatever trouble there is with my husband is entirely your making. I only wonder that he puts up with your ways as he does. If his temper was not as good as yours is bad he would not be able to do so."

" All right, mother," Ned said. " He is an angel, he is, we all know, and I am the other thing. Well, if you are contented, that's the great thing, isn't it ? I only hope you will always be so; but there," he said, calming himself with a great effort as his father's last words again came into his mind, " don't let's quarrel, mother. I am sorry for what I have said. It's quite right that you should stick up for your husband, and I do hope that when I go you will, as you say, be more comfortable and happy. Perhaps you will. I am sure I hope so. Well, I know I am not nice with him. I can't help it. It's my beastly temper, I suppose. That's an old story. Come, mother, I have only a short time to be at home now. Let us both try and make it as pleasant as we can, so that when I am thousands of miles away, perhaps in India, we may have it to look back upon. You try and leave my friends alone and I will try and be as pleasant as I can with your husband."

Mrs. Mulready was crying now.

" You know, Ned, I would love you if you would let

me, only you are so set against my husband. I am sure he always means kindly. Look how he takes to little Lucy, who is getting quite fond of him."

"Yes, I am very glad to think that he is, mother," Ned said earnestly. " You see Lucy is much younger, and naturally remembers comparatively little about her father, and has been able to take to Mr. Mulready without our prejudices. I am very glad to see that he really does like her—in fact I do think he is getting quite fond of her. I shall go away feeling quite easy about her. I wish I could say as much about Charlie. He is not strong, like other boys, and feels unkindness very sharply. I can see him shrink and shiver when your husband speaks to him, and am afraid he will have a very bad time of it when I am gone."

" I am sure, Ned, he will get on very well," Mrs. Mulready said. "I have no doubt that when he gets rid of the example you set him—I don't want to begin to quarrel again—but of the example you set him of dislike and disrespect to Mr. Mulready, that he will soon be quite different. He will naturally turn to me again instead of looking to you for all his opinions, and things will go on smoothly and well."

" I am sure I hope so, mother. Perhaps I have done wrong in helping to set Charlie against Mulready. Perhaps when I have gone, too, things will be easier for him. If I could only think so I should go away with a lighter heart. Well, anyhow, mother, I am glad we have had this talk. It is not often we get a quiet talk together now."

" I am sure it is not my fault," Mrs. Mulready said in a slightly injured tone.

"Perhaps not, mother," Ned said kindly. "With the best intentions, I know I am always doing things wrong. It's my way, I suppose. Anyhow, mother, I really have meant well, and I hope you will think of me kindly after I have gone."