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HAWORTH'S.

HE WAS SO NEAR THAT HER DRESS ALMOST TOUCHED HIM. (Page 70.)

Haworth's

BY

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

AUTHOR OF "THAT LASS O' LOWRIE'S"

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907

Copyright by
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT,
1879, 1907.
(All rights reserved.)

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

HAWORTH'S FIRST APPEARANCE.

"HAWORTH'S."

CHAPTER I. TWENTY YEARS.

Twenty years ago! Yes, twenty years ago this very day, and there were men among them who remembered it. Only two, however, and these were old men whose day was passed and who would soon be compelled to give up work. Naturally upon this occasion these two were the center figures in the group of talkers who were discussing the topic of the hour.

"Aye," said old Tipton, "I 'member it as well as if it wur yesterday, fur aw it's twenty year' sin'. Eh! but it wur cowd! Th' cowdest neet i' th' winter, an' th' winter wur a bad un. Th' snow wur two foot deep. Theer wur a big rush o' work, an' we'd had to keep th' foires goin' arter midneet. Theer wur a chap workin' then by th' name o' Bob Latham,—he's dead long sin',—an' he went to th' foundry-door to look out. Yo' know how some chaps is about seein' how cowd it is, or how hot, or how heavy th' rain's comin' down. Well, he wur one o' them soart, an' he mun go an' tak' a look out at th' snow.

"'Coom in, tha foo',' sez I to him. 'Whatten tha stickin' tha thick yed out theer fur, as if it wur midsummer, i'stead o' being cowd enow to freeze th' tail off a brass jackass. Coom in wi' tha.'

"'Aye,' he sez, a-chatterin' his teeth, 'it is cowd sure-ly. It's enow to stiffen a mon.'

"'I wish it ud stiffen thee,' I sez, 'so as we mought set thee up as a monyment at th' front o' th' 'Sylum.'

"An' then aw at onct I heard him gie a jump an' a bit o' a yell, like, under his breath. 'God-a-moighty!' he sez.

"Summat i' th' way he said it soart o' wakkened me.

"'What's up?' I sez.

"'Coom here,' sez he. 'Theer's a dead lad here.'

"An' when I getten to him, sure enow I thowt he wur reet. Drawed up i' a heap nigh th' door theer wur a lad lyin' on th' snow, an' th' stiff look on him mowt ha' gi'en ony mon a turn.

"Latham wur bendin' ower him, wi' his teeth chatterin'.

"'Blast thee!' I sez, 'why dost na tha lift him?'

"Betwixt us we did lift him, an' carry him into th' Works an' laid him down nigh one o' the furnaces, an' th' fellys coom crowdin' round to look at him. He wur a lad about nine year' owd, an' strong built; but he looked more than half clemmed, an' arter we'st rubbed him a good bit an' getten him warmed enow to coom round 'i a manner, th' way he set up an' stared round were summat queer.

"'Mesters,' he sez, hoarse an' shaky, 'ha' ony on yo' getten a bit o' bread?'

"Bob Latham's missus had put him up summat to eat, an' he browt it an' gie it to him. Well, th' little chap a'most snatched it, an' crammed it into his mouth i' great mouthfuls. His honds trembled so he could scarce howd th' meat an' bread, an' in a bit us as wur standin' lookin' on seed him soart o' choke, as if he wur goin' to cry; but he swallyed it down, and did na.

"'I havn't had nowt to eat i' a long time,' sez he.

"'How long?' sez I.

"Seemt like he thowt it ower a bit afore he answered, and then he sez:

"'I think it mun ha' been four days.'

"'Wheer are yo' fro'?' one chap axed.

"'I coom a long way,' he sez. 'I've bin on th' road three week'.' An' then he looks up sharp. 'I run away fro' th' Union,' he sez.

"That wur th' long an' short on it—he had th' pluck to run away fro' th' Union, an' he'd had th' pluck to stond out agen clemmin' an' freezin' until flesh an' blood ud howd out no longer, an' he'd fell down at the foundry-door.

"'I seed th' loight o' th' furnaces,' he sez, 'an' I tried to run; but I went blind an' fell down. I thowt,' he sez, as cool as a cucumber, 'as I wur deein'.'

"Well, we kep' him aw neet an' took him to th' mester i' th' mornin', an' th' mester gie him a place, an' he stayed. An' he's bin i' th' foundry fro' that day to this, an' how he's worked an' getten on yo' see for yoresens—fro' beein' at ivvery one's beck an' call to buyin' out Flixton an' settin' up for hissen. It's the 'Haworth Iron Works' fro' to-day on, an' he will na mak' a bad mester, eyther."

"Nay, he will na," commented another of the old ones. "He's a pretty rough chap, but he'll do—will Jem Haworth."

There was a slight confused movement in the group.

"Here he cooms," exclaimed an outsider.

The man who entered the door-way—a strongly built fellow, whose handsome clothes sat rather ill on his somewhat uncouth body—made his way through the crowd with small ceremony. He met the glances of the workmen with a rough nod, and went straight to the managerial desk. But he did not sit down; he stood up, facing those who waited as if he meant to dispose of the business in hand as directly as possible.

"Well, chaps," he said, "here we are."

A slight murmur, as of assent, ran through the room.

"Aye, mester," they said; "here we are."

"Well," said he, "you know why, I suppose. We're taking a fresh start, and I've something to say to you. I've had my say here for some time; but I've not had my way, and now the time's come when I can have it. Hang me, but I'm going to have the biggest place in England, and the best place, too. 'Haworth's' sha'n't be second to none. I've set my mind on that. I said I'd stand here some day,"—with a blow on the desk,—"and here I am. I said I'd make my way, and I've done it. From to-day on, this here's 'Haworth's,' and to show you I mean to start fair and square, if there's a chap here that's got a grievance, let that chap step out and speak his mind to Jem Haworth himself. Now's his time." And he sat down.

There was another stir and murmur, this time rather of consultation; then one of them stepped forward.

"Mester," he said, "I'm to speak fur 'em." Haworth nodded.

"What I've getten to say," said the man, "is said easy. Them as thowt they'd getten grievances is willin' to leave the settlin' on 'em to Jem Haworth."

"That's straight enough," said Haworth. "Let 'em stick to it and there's not a chap among 'em sha'n't have his chance. Go into Greyson's room, lads, and drink luck to 'Haworth's.' Tipton and Harrison, you wait a bit."

Tipton and Harrison lingered with some degree of timidity. By the time the room had emptied itself, Haworth seemed to have fallen into a reverie. He leaned back in his chair, his hands in his pockets, and stared gloomily before him. The room had been silent five minutes before he aroused himself with a start. Then he leaned forward and beckoned to the two, who came and stood before him.

"You two were in the place when I came," he said. "You"—to Tipton—"were the fellow as lifted me from the snow."

"Aye, mester," was the answer, "twenty year' ago, to-neet."

"The other fellow——"

"Dead! Eh! Long sin'. Ivvery chap as wur theer, dead an' gone, but me an' him," with a jerk toward his comrade.

Haworth put his hand in his vest-pocket and drew forth a crisp piece of paper, evidently placed there for a purpose.

"Here," he said with some awkwardness, "divide that between you."

"Betwixt us two!" stammered the old man. "It's a ten-pun-note, mester!"

"Yes," with something like shamefacedness. "I used to say to myself when I was a youngster that every chap who was in the Works that night should have a five-pound note to-day. Get out, old lads, and get as drunk as you please. I've kept my word. But—" his laugh breaking off in the middle—"I wish there'd been more of you to keep it up together."

Then they were gone, chuckling in senile delight over their good luck, and he was left alone. He glanced round the room—a big, handsome one, well filled with massive office furniture, and yet wearing the usual empty, barren look.

"It's taken twenty years," he said, "but I've done it. It's done—and yet there isn't as much of it as I used to think there would be."

He rose from his chair and went to the window to look out, rather impelled by restlessness than any motive. The prospect, at least, could not have attracted him. The place was closed in by tall and dingy houses, whose slate roofs shone with the rain which drizzled down through the smoky air. The ugly yard was wet and had a deserted look; the only living object which caught his eye was the solitary figure of a man who stood waiting at the iron gates.

At the sight of this man, he started backward with an exclamation.

"The devil take the chap!" he said. "There he is again!"

He took a turn across the room, but he came back again and looked out once more, as if he found some irresistible fascination in the sight of the frail, shabbily clad figure.

"Yes," he said, "it's him, sure enough. I never saw another fellow with the same, done-for look. I wonder what he wants."

He went to the door and opening it spoke to a man who chanced to be passing.

"Floxham, come in here," he said. Floxham was a well-oiled and burly fellow, plainly fresh from the engine-room. He entered without ceremony, and followed his master to the window. Haworth pointed to the man at the gate.

"There's a chap," he said, "that I've been running up against, here and there, for the last two months. The fellow seems to spend his time wandering up and down the streets. I'm hanged if he don't make me think of a ghost. He goes against the grain with me, somehow. Do you know who he is, and what's up with him?"

Floxham glanced toward the gate-way, and then nodded his head dryly.

"Aye," he answered. "He's th' inventin' chap as has bin thirty year' at work at some contrapshun, an' hasn't browt it to a yed yet. He lives i' our street, an' me an' my missis hes been noticin' him fur a good bit. He'll noan finish th' thing he's at. He's on his last legs now. He took th' contrapshun to 'Merica thirty year' ago, when he first getten th' idea into his yed, an' he browt it back a bit sin' a'most i' the same fix he took it. Me an' my missis think he's a bit soft i' the yed."

Haworth pushed by him to get nearer the window. A slight moisture started out upon his forehead.

"Thirty year'!" he exclaimed. "By the Lord Harry!"

There might have been something in his excitement which had its effect upon the man who stood outside. He seemed, as it were, to awaken slowly from a fit of lethargy. He glanced up at the window, and moved slowly forward.

"He's made up his mind to come in," said Floxham.

"What does he want?" said Haworth, with a sense of physical uneasiness. "Confound the fellow!" trying to shake off the feeling with a laugh. "What does he want with me—to-day?"

"I can go out an' turn him back," said Floxham.

"No," answered Haworth. "You can go back to your work. I'll hear what he has to say. I've naught else to do just now."

Floxham left him, and he went back to the big armchair behind the table. He sat down, and turned over some papers, not rid of his uneasiness even when the door opened, and his visitor came in. He was a tall, slender man who stooped and was narrow-chested. He was gray, hollow-eyed and haggard. He removed his shabby hat and stood before the table a second, in silence.

"Mr. Haworth?" he said, in a gentle, absent-minded voice. "They told me this was Mr. Haworth's room."

"Yes," he answered, "I'm Haworth."

"I want—" a little hoarsely, and faltering—"to get some work to do. My name is Murdoch. I've spent the last thirty years in America, but I'm a Lancashire man. I went to America on business—which has not been successful—yet. I—I have worked here before,"—with a glance around him,—"and I should like to work here again. I did not think it would be necessary, but—that doesn't matter. Perhaps it will only be temporary. I must get work."

In the last sentence his voice faltered more than ever. He seemed suddenly to awaken and bring himself back to his first idea, as if he had not intended to wander from it.

"I—I must get work," he repeated.

The effect he produced upon the man he appealed to was peculiar. Jem Haworth almost resented his frail appearance. He felt it an uncomfortable thing to confront just at this hour of his triumph. He had experienced the same sensation, in a less degree, when he rose in the morning and looked out of his window upon murky sky and falling rain. He would almost have given a thousand pounds for clear, triumphant sunshine.

And yet, in spite of this, he was not quite as brusque as usual when he made his answer.

"I've heard of you," he said. "You've had ill luck."

Stephen Murdoch shifted his hat from hand to hand.

"I don't know," he replied, slowly. "I've not called it that yet. The end has been slow, but I think it's sure. It will come some——"

Haworth made a rough gesture.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "Haven't you given the thing up yet?"

Murdoch fell back a pace, and stared at him in a stunned way.

"Given it up!" he repeated. "Yet?"

"Look here!" said Haworth. "You'd better do it, if you haven't. Take my advice, and have done with it. You're not a young chap, and if a thing's a failure after thirty years' work——" He stopped, because he saw the man trembling nervously. "Oh, I didn't mean to take the pluck out of you," he said bluntly, a moment later. "You must have had plenty of it to begin with, egad, or you'd never have stood it this long."

"I don't know that it was pluck,"—still quivering. "I've lived on it so long that it would not give me up. I think that's it."

Haworth dashed off a couple of lines on a slip of paper, and tossed it to him.

"Take that to Greyson," he said, "and you'll get your work, and if you have anything to complain of, come to me."

Murdoch took the paper, and held it hesitatingly.

"I—perhaps I ought not to have asked for it to-day," he said, nervously. "I'm not a business man, and I didn't think of it. I came in because I saw you. I'm going to London to-morrow, and shall not be back for a week."

"That's all right," said Haworth. "Come then."

He was not sorry to see his visitor turn away, after uttering a few simple words of thanks. It would be a relief to see the door close after him. But when it had closed, to his discomfiture it opened again. The thin, poorly clad figure reappeared.

"I heard in the town," said the man, his cheek flushing faintly, "of what has happened here to-day. Twenty years have brought you better luck than thirty have brought me."

"Yes," answered Haworth, "my luck's been good enough, as luck goes."

"It seems almost a folly"—falling into the meditative tone—"for me to wish you good luck in the future." And then, pulling himself together again as before: "it is a folly; but I wish it, nevertheless. Good luck to you!"

The door closed, and he was gone.

CHAPTER II. THIRTY YEARS.

A little later there stood at a window, in one of the cheapest of the respectable streets, a woman whom the neighbors had become used to seeing there. She was a small person, with a repressed and watchful look in her eyes, and she was noticeable, also, to the Lancashire mind, for a certain slightly foreign air, not easily described. It was in consequence of inquiries made concerning this foreign air, that the rumor had arisen that she was a "'Merican," and it was possibly a result of this rumor that she was regarded by the inhabitants of the street with a curiosity not unmingled with awe.

"Aye," said one honest matron. "Hoo's a 'Merican, fur my mester heerd it fro' th' landlord. Eh! I would like to ax her summat about th' Blacks an' th' Indians."

But it was not easy to attain the degree of familiarity warranting the broaching of subjects so delicate and truly "'Merican." The stranger and her husband lived a simple and secluded life. It was said the woman had never been known to go out; it seemed her place to stand or sit at the window and watch for the man when he left the house on one of his mysterious errands in company with the wooden case he carried by its iron handle.

This morning she waited as usual, though the case had not gone out,—rather to the disappointment of those interested, whose conjectures concerning its contents were varied and ingenious. When, at last, the tall, stooping figure turned the corner, she went to the door and stood in readiness to greet its crossing the threshold.

Stephen Murdoch looked down at her with a kindly, absent smile.

"Thank you, Kitty," he said. "You are always here, my dear."

There was a narrow, hard, horse-hair sofa in the small room into which they passed, and he went to it and lay down upon it, panting a little in an exhausted way, a hectic red showing itself on his hollow cheeks.

"Everything is ready, Kitty?" he said at last.

"Yes, all ready."

He lay and looked at the fire, still breathing shortly.

"I never was as certain of it before," he said. "I have thought I was certain, but—I never felt as I do now. And yet—I don't know what made me do it—I went into Haworth's this morning and asked for—for work."

His wife dropped the needle she was holding.

"For work!" she said.

"Yes—yes," a little hastily. "I was there and saw Haworth at a window, and there have been delays so often that it struck me I might as well—not exactly depend on it——" He broke off and buried his face in his hands. "What am I saying?" he cried. "It sounds as if I did not believe in it."

His wife drew her chair nearer to him. She was used to the task of consoling him; it had become a habit. She spoke in an even, unemotional voice.

"When Hilary comes——" she began.

"It will be all over then," he said, "one way or the other. He will be here when I come back."

"Yes."

"I may have good news for him," he said. "I don't see"—faltering afresh—"how it can be otherwise. Only I am so used to discouragement that—that I can't see the thing fairly. It has been—a long time, Kitty."

"This man in London," she said, "can tell you the actual truth about it?"

"He is the first mechanic and inventor in England," he answered, his eye sparkling feverishly. "He is a genius. If he says it is a success, it is one."

The woman rose, and going to the fire bent down to stir it. She lingered over it for a moment or so before she came back.

"When the lad comes," he was saying, as if to himself, "we shall have news for him."

Thirty years before, he had reached America, a gentle, unpractical Lancashire man, with a frail physique and empty pockets. He had belonged in his own land to the better class of mechanics; he had a knack of invention which somehow had never as yet brought forth any decided results. He had done one or two things which had gained him the reputation among his employers of being "a clever fellow," but they had always been things which had finally slipped into stronger or shrewder hands, and left his own empty. But at last there had come to him what seemed a new and wonderful thought. He had labored with it in secret, he had lain awake through long nights brooding over it in the darkness.

And then some one had said to him:

"Why don't you try America? America's the place for a thinking, inventing chap like you. It's fellows like you who are appreciated in a new country. Capitalists are not so slow in America. Why don't you carry your traps out there?"

It was more a suggestion of boisterous good-fellowship than anything else, but it awakened new fancies in Stephen Murdoch's mind. He had always cherished vaguely grand visions of the New World, and they were easily excited.

"I only wonder I never thought of it," he said to himself.

He landed on the strange shore with high hopes in his breast, and a little unperfected model in his shabby trunk.

This was thirty years ago, and to-day he was in Lancashire again, in his native town, with the same little model among his belongings.

During the thirty years' interval he had lived an unsettled, unsuccessful life. He had labored faithfully at his task, but he had not reached the end which had been his aim. Sometimes he had seemed very near it, but it had always evaded him. He had drifted here and there bearing his work with him, earning a scant livelihood by doing anything chance threw in his way. It had always been a scant livelihood,—though after the lapse of eight years, in one of his intervals of hopefulness, he had married. On the first night they spent in their new home he had taken his wife into a little bare room, set apart from the rest, and had shown her his model.

"I think a few weeks will finish it," he said.

The earliest recollections of their one child centered themselves round the small room and its contents. It was the one touch of romance and mystery in their narrow, simple life. The few spare hours the struggle for daily bread left the man were spent there; sometimes he even stole hours from the night, and yet the end was always one step further. His frail body grew frailer, his gentle temperament more excitable, he was feverishly confident and utterly despairing by turns. It was in one of his hours of elation that his mind turned again to his old home. He was sure at last that a few days' work would complete all, and then only friends were needed.

"England is the place, after all," he said. "They are more steady there, even if they are not so sanguine,—and there are men in Lancashire I can rely upon. We'll try Old England once again."

The little money hard labor and scant living had laid away for an hour of need, they brought with them. Their son had remained to dispose of their few possessions. Between this son and the father there existed a strong affection, and Stephen Murdoch had done his best by him.

"I should like the lad," he used to say, "to have a fairer chance than I had. I want him to have what I have lacked."

As he lay upon the horse-hair sofa he spoke of him to his wife.

"There are not many like him," he said. "He'll make his way. I've sometimes thought that may-be——" But he did not finish the sentence; the words died away on his lips, and he lay—perhaps thinking over them as he looked at the fire.

CHAPTER III. "NOT FINISHED."

The next morning he went upon his journey, and a few days later the son came. He was a tall young fellow, with a dark, strongly cut face, deep-set black eyes and an unconventional air. Those who had been wont to watch his father, watched him in his turn with quite as much interest. He seemed to apply himself to the task of exploring the place at once. He went out a great deal and in all sorts of weather. He even presented himself at "Haworth's," and making friends with Floxham got permission to go through the place and look at the machinery. His simple directness of speech at once baffled and softened Floxham.

"My name's Murdoch," he said. "I'm an American and I'm interested in mechanics. If it isn't against your rules I should like to see your machinery."

Floxham pushed his cap off his forehead and looked him over.

"Well, I'm dom'd," he remarked.

It had struck him at first that this might be "cheek." And then he recognized that it was not.

Murdoch looked slightly bewildered.

"If there is any objection——" he began.

"Well, there is na," said Floxham. "Coom on in." And he cut the matter short by turning into the door.

"Did any 'o yo' chaps see that felly as coom to look at th' machinery?" he said afterward to his comrades. "He's fro' 'Merica, an' danged if he has na more head-fillin' than yo'd think fur. He goes round wi' his hands i' his pockits lookin' loike a foo', an' axin' questions as ud stump an owd un. He's th' inventin' chap's lad. I dunnot go much wi' inventions mysen, but th' young chap's noan sich a foo' as he looks."

Between mother and son but little had been said on the subject which reigned supreme in the mind of each. It had never been their habit to speak freely on the matter. On the night of Hilary's arrival, as they sat together, the woman said:

"He went away three days ago. He will be back at the end of the week. He hoped to have good news for you."

They said little beyond this, but both sat silent for some time afterward, and the conversation became desultory and lagged somewhat until they separated for the night.

The week ended with fresh gusts of wind and heavy rains. Stephen Murdoch came home in a storm. On the day fixed for his return, his wife scarcely left her seat at the window for an hour. She sat looking out at the driving rain with a pale and rigid face; when the night fell and she rose to close the shutters, Hilary saw that her hands shook.

She made the small room as bright as possible, and set the evening meal upon the table, and then sat down and waited again by the fire, cowering a little over it, but not speaking.

"His being detained is not a bad sign," said Hilary.

Half an hour later they both started from their seats at once. There was a loud summons at the door. It was Hilary who opened it, his mother following closely.

A great gust of wind blew the rain in upon them, and Stephen Murdoch, wet and storm-beaten, stepped in from the outer darkness, carrying the wooden case in his hands.

He seemed scarcely to see them. He made his way past them and into the lighted room with an uncertain step. The light appeared to dazzle him. He went to the sofa weakly and threw himself upon it; he was trembling like a leaf; he had aged ten years.

"I—I——" And then he looked up at them as they stood before him waiting. "There is naught to say," he cried out, and burst into wild, hysterical weeping, like that of a woman.

In obedience to a sign from his mother, Hilary left the room. When, after the lapse of half an hour, he returned, all was quiet. His father lay upon the sofa with closed eyes, his mother sat near him. He did not rise nor touch food, and only spoke once during the evening. Then he opened his eyes and turned them upon the case which still stood where he had placed it.

"Take it away," he said in a whisper. "Take it away."

The next morning Hilary went to Floxham.

"I want work," he said. "Do you think I can get it here?"

"What soart does tha want?" asked the engineer, not too encouragingly. "Th' gentlemanly soart as tha con do wi' kid-gloves an' a eye-glass on?"

"No," answered Murdoch, "not that sort."

Floxham eyed him keenly.

"Would tha tak' owt as was offert thee?" he demanded.

"I think I would."

"Aw reet, then! I'll gie thee a chance. Coom tha wi' me to th' engine-room, an' see how long tha'lt stick to it."

It was very ordinary work he was given to do, but he seemed to take quite kindly to it; in fact, the manner in which he applied himself to the rough tasks which fell to his lot gave rise to no slight dissatisfaction among his fellow-workmen, and caused him to be regarded with small respect. He was usually a little ahead of the stipulated time, he had an equable temper, and yet despite this and his civility, he seemed often more than half oblivious of the existence of those around him. A highly flavored joke did not awaken him to enthusiasm, and perhaps chiefest among his failings was noted the fact that he had no predilection for "sixpenny," and at his midday meal, which he frequently brought with him and ate in any convenient corner, he sat drinking cold water and eating his simple fare over a book.

"Th' chap is na more than haaf theer," was the opinion generally expressed.

Since the night of his return from his journey, Stephen Murdoch had been out no more. The neighbors watched for him in vain. The wooden case stood unopened in his room,—he had never spoken of it. Through the long hours of the day he lay upon the sofa, either dozing or in silent wakefulness, and at length instead of upon the sofa he lay upon the bed, not having strength to rise.

About three months after he had taken his place at Haworth's, Hilary came home one evening to find his mother waiting for him at the door. She shed no tears, there was in her face only a hopeless terror.

"He has sent me out of the room," she said. "He has been restless all day. He said he must be alone."

Hilary went upstairs. Opening the door he fell back a step. The model was in its old place on the work-table and near it stood a tall, gaunt, white figure.

His father turned toward him. He touched himself upon the breast. "I always told myself," he said, incoherently and hoarsely, "that there was a flaw in it—that something was lacking. I have said that for thirty years, and believed the day would come when I should remedy the wrong. To-night I know. The truth has come to me at last. There was no remedy. The flaw was in me," touching his hollow chest,—"in me. As I lay there I thought once that perhaps it was not real—that I had dreamed it all and might awake. I got up to see—to touch it. It is there! Good God!" as if a sudden terror grasped him. "Not finished!—and I——"

He fell into a chair and sank forward, his hand falling upon the model helplessly and unmeaningly.

Hilary raised him and laid his head upon his shoulder. He heard his mother at the door and cried out loudly to her.

"Go back!" he said. "Go back! You must not come in."

CHAPTER IV. JANEY BRIARLEY.

A week later Hilary Murdoch returned from the Broxton grave-yard in a drizzling rain, and made his way to the bare, cleanly swept chamber upstairs.

Since the night on which he had cried out to his mother that she must not enter, the table at which the dead man had been wont to sit at work had been pushed aside. Some one had thrown a white cloth over it. Murdoch went to it and drew this cloth away. He stood and looked down at the little skeleton of wood and steel. It had been nothing but a curse from first to last, and yet it fascinated him. He found it hard to do the thing he had come to do.

"It is not finished," he said to the echoes of the empty room. "It—never will be."

He slowly replaced it in its case, and buried it out of sight at the bottom of the trunk which, from that day forward, would stand unused and locked.

When he arose, after doing this, he unconsciously struck his hands together as he had seen grave-diggers do when they brushed the damp soil away.

The first time Haworth saw his new hand he regarded him with small favor. In crossing the yard one day at noon, he came upon him disposing of his midday meal and reading at the same time. He stopped to look at him.

"Who's that?" he asked one of the men.

The fellow grinned in amiable appreciation of the rough tone of the query.

"That's th' 'Merican," he answered. "An' a soft un he is."

"What's that he's reading?"

"Summat about engineerin', loike as not. That's his crank."

In the rush of his new plans and the hurry of the last few months, Haworth had had time to forget the man who had wished him "good luck," and whose pathetic figure had been a shadow upon the first glow of his triumph. He did not connect him at all with the young fellow before him. He turned away with a shrug of his burly shoulders.

"He doesn't look like an Englishman," he said. "He hasn't got backbone enough."

Afterward when the two accidentally came in contact, Haworth wasted few civil words. At times his domineering brusqueness excited Murdoch to wonder.

"He's a queer fellow, that Haworth," he said reflectingly to Floxham. "Sometimes I think he's out of humor with me."

With the twelve-year-old daughter of one of the workmen, who used to bring her father's dinner, the young fellow had struck up something of a friendship. She was the eldest of twelve, a mature young person, whose business-like air had attracted him.

She had assisted her mother in the rearing of her family from her third year, and had apparently done with the follies of youth. She was stunted with much nursing and her small face had a shrewd and careworn look. Murdoch's first advances she received with some distrust, but after a lapse of time they progressed fairly and, without any weak sentiment, were upon excellent terms.

One rainy day she came into the yard enveloped in a large shawl, evidently her mother's, and also evidently very much in her way. Her dinner-can, her beer-jug, and her shawl were more than she could manage.

"Eh! I am in a mess," she said to Hilary, stopping at the door-way with a long-drawn breath. "I dunnot know which way to turn—what wi' th' beer and what wi' th' dinner. I've getten on mother's Sunday shawl as she had afore she wur wed, an' th' eends keep a-draggin' an' a-draggin', an' th' mud'll be th' ruin on em. Th' pin mother put in is na big enow, an' it's getten loose."

There was perhaps not much sense of humor in the young man. He did not seem to see the grotesqueness of the little figure with its mud-bedraggled maternal wrappings. He turned up the lapel of his coat and examined it quite seriously.

"I've got a pin here that will hold it," he said. "I picked it up because it was such a large one."

Janey Briarley's eyes brightened.

"Eh!" she ejaculated, "that theer's a graidely big un. Some woman mun ha' dropped it out o' her shawl. Wheer did tha foind it?"

"In the street."

"I thowt so. Some woman's lost it. Dost tha think tha con pin it reet, or mun I put th' beer down an' do it mysen?"

He thought he could do it and bent down to reach her level.

It was at this moment that Haworth approached the door with the intention of passing out. Things had gone wrong with him, and he was in one of his worst moods. He strode down the passage in a savage hurry, and, finding his way barred, made no effort to keep his temper.

"Get out of the road," he said, and pushed Murdoch aside slightly with his foot.

It was as if he had dropped a spark of fire into gunpowder. Murdoch sprang to his feet, white with wrath and quivering.

"D——n you!" he shrieked. "D——n you! I'll kill you!" and he rushed upon him.

As he sprang upon him, Haworth staggered between the shock and his amazement. A sense of the true nature of the thing he had done broke in upon him.

When it was all over he fell back a pace, and a grim surprise, not without its hint of satisfaction, was in his face.

"The devil take you," he said. "You have got some blood in you, after all."

CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNING OF A FRIENDSHIP.

The next morning, when he appeared at the Works, Murdoch found he had to make his way through a group of the "hands" which some sufficiently powerful motive had gathered together,—which group greeted his appearance with signs of interest. "Theer he is," he heard them say. And then a gentleman of leisure, who was an outsider leaning against the wall, enjoying the solace of a short pipe, exerted himself to look round and add his comment.

"Well," he remarked, "he may ha' done it, an' I wunnot stick out as he did na; but if it wur na fur the circumstantshal evidence I would na ha' believed it."

Floxham met him at the entrance with a message.

"Haworth's sent fur thee," he said.

"Where is he?"—coolly enough under the circumstances.

The engineer chuckled in sly exultation.

"He's in the office. He didna say nowt about givin' thee th' bag; but tha may as well mak' up thy moind to it. Tha wert pretty cheeky, tha knows, considerin' he wur th' mester."

"Look here," with some heat; "do you mean to say you think I was in the wrong? Am I to let the fellow insult me and not resent it—touch me with his foot, as if I were a dog?"

"Tha'rt particular, my lad," dryly. "An' tha does na know as much o' th' mester koind as most folk." But the next instant he flung down the tool he held in his hand. "Dom thee!" he cried. "I loike thy pluck. Stick to it, lad,—mesters or no mesters."

As Murdoch crossed the threshold of his room, Jem Haworth turned in his seat and greeted him with a short nod not altogether combative. Then he leaned forward, with his arms upon the table before him.

"Sit down," he said. "I'd like to take a look at the chap who thought he could thrash Jem Haworth."

But Murdoch did not obey him.

"I suppose you have something to say to me," he said, "as you sent for me."

He did not receive the answer he was prepared for. Jem Haworth burst into a loud laugh.

"By George! you're a plucky chap," he said, "if you are an American."

Murdoch's blood rose again.

"Say what you have to say," he demanded. "I can guess what it is; but, let me tell you, I should do the same thing again. It was no fault of mine that I was in your path——"

"If I'd been such a fool as not to see that," put in Haworth, with a smile grimmer than before, "do you think I couldn't have smashed every bone in your body?"

Then Murdoch comprehended how matters were to stand between them.

"Getten th' bag?" asked Floxham when he went back to his work.

"No."

"Tha hannot?" with animation. "Well, dang me!"

At the close of the day, as they were preparing to leave their work, Haworth presented himself in the engine-room, looking perhaps a trifle awkward.

"See here," he said to Murdoch, "I've heard something to-day as I've missed hearing before, somehow. The inventing chap was your father?"

"Yes."

He stood in an uneasy attitude, looking out of the window as if he half expected to see the frail, tall figure again.

"I saw him once, poor chap," he said, "and he stuck to me, somehow. I'd meant to stand by him if he'd come here. I'd have liked to do him a good turn."

He turned to Murdoch suddenly and with a hint of embarrassment in his off-hand air.

"Come up and have dinner with me," he said. "It's devilish dull spending a chap's nights in a big place like mine. Come up with me now."

The visit was scarcely to Murdoch's taste, but it was easier to accept than to refuse. He had seen the house often, and had felt some slight curiosity as to its inside appearance.

There was only one other house in Broxton which approached it in size and splendor, and this stood empty at present, its owner being abroad. Broxton itself was a sharp and dingy little town, whose inhabitants were mostly foundry hands. It had grown up around the Works and increased with them. It had a small railway station, two or three public houses much patronized, and wore, somehow, an air of being utterly unconnected with the outside world which much belied it. Motives of utility, a desire to be on the spot, and a general disregard for un-business-like attractions had led Haworth to build his house on the outskirts of the town.

"When I want a spree," he had said, "I can go to Manchester or London, and I'm not particular about the rest on it. I want to be nigh the place."

It was a big house and a handsome one. It was one of the expressions of the man's success, and his pride was involved in it. He spent money on it lavishly, and, having completed it, went to live a desolate life among its grandeurs.

The inhabitants of the surrounding villages, which were simple and agricultural, regarded Broxton with frank distaste, and "Haworth's" with horror. Haworth's smoke polluted their atmosphere. Haworth's hands made weekly raids upon their towns and rendered themselves obnoxious in their streets. The owner of the Works, his mode of life, his defiance of opinion, and his coarse sins, were supposed to be tabooed subjects. The man was ignored, and left to his visitors from the larger towns,—visitors who occasionally presented themselves to be entertained at his house in a fashion of his own, and who were a greater scandal than all the rest.

"They hate me," said Haworth to his visitor, as they sat down to dinner; "they hate me, the devil take 'em. I'm not moral enough for 'em—not moral enough!" with a shout of laughter.

There was something unreal to his companion in the splendor with which the great fellow was surrounded. The table was covered with a kind of banquet; servants moved about noiselessly as he talked and laughed; the appointments of the room were rich and in good taste.

"Oh! it's none of my work," he said, seeing Murdoch glance about him. "I wasn't fool enough to try to do it myself. I gave it into the hands of them as knew how."

He was loud-tongued and boastful; but he showed good-nature enough and a rough wit, and it was also plain that he knew his own strength and weaknesses.

"Thirty year' your father was at work on that notion of his?" he said once during the evening.

Murdoch made an uneasy gesture of assent.

"And it never came to aught?"

"No."

"He died."

"Yes."

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and gave the young fellow a keen look.

"Why don't you take the thing up yourself?" he said. "There may be something in it, after all, and you're a long-headed chap."

Murdoch started from his chair. He took an excited turn across the room before he knew what he was doing.

"I never will," he said, "so help me God! The thing's done with and shut out of the world."

When he went away, Haworth accompanied him to the door. At the threshold he turned about.

"How do you like the look of things?" he demanded.

"I should be hard to please if I did not like the look of them," was the answer.

"Well, then, come again. You're welcome. I have it all to myself. I'm not favorite enow with the gentry to bring any on 'em here. You're free to come when th' fit takes you."

CHAPTER VI. MISS FFRENCH.

It was considered, after this, a circumstance illustrative of Haworth's peculiarities that he had taken to himself a protégé from among the "hands;" that said protégé was an eccentric young fellow who was sometimes spoken of as being scarcely as bright as he should be; that he occasionally dined or supped with Haworth; that he spent numberless evenings with him, and that he read his books, which would not have been much used otherwise.

Murdoch lived his regular, unemotional life, in happy ignorance of these rumors. It was true that he gradually fell into the habit of going to Haworth's house, and also of reading his books. Indeed, if the truth were told, these had been his attraction.

"I've no use for 'em," said Haworth, candidly, on showing him his library. "Get into 'em, if you've a fancy for 'em."

His fancy for them was strong enough to bring him to the place again and again. He found books he had wanted, but never hoped to possess. The library, it may be admitted, was not of Jem Haworth's selection, and, indeed, this gentleman's fancy for his new acquaintance was not a little increased by a shrewd admiration for an intellectual aptness which might be turned to practical account.

"You tackle 'em as if you were used to 'em," he used to say. "I'd give something solid myself if I could do the same. There's what's against me many a time—knowing naught of books, and having to fight my way rough and ready."

From the outset of this acquaintance, Murdoch's position at the Works had been an easier one. It became understood that Haworth would stand by him, and that he must be treated with a certain degree of respect. Greater latitude was given him, and better pay, and though he remained in the engine-room, other and more responsible work frequently fell into his hands.

He went on in the even tenor of his way, uncommunicative and odd as ever. He still presented himself ahead of time, and labored with the unnecessary, absorbed ardor of an enthusiast, greatly to the distaste of those less zealous.

"Tha gets into it as if tha wur doin' fur thysen," said one of these. "Happen"—feeling the sarcasm a strong one—"happen tha'rt fond on it?"

"Oh yes,"—unconsciously—"that's it, I suppose. I'm fond of it."

The scoffer bestowed upon him one thunderstruck glance, opened his mouth, shut it, and retired in disgust.

"Theer's a chap," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, on returning to his companions, "theer's a chap as says he's fond o' work—fond on it!" with dramatic scorn. "Blast his eyes! Fond on it!"

With Floxham he had always stood well, though even Floxham's regard was tempered with a slight private contempt for peculiarities not easily tolerated by the practical mind.

"Th' chap's getten gumption enow, i' his way," he said to Haworth. "If owt breaks down or gets out o' gear, he's aw theer; but theer is na a lad on th' place as could na cheat him out o' his eye-teeth."

His reputation for being a "queer chap" was greatly increased by the simplicity and seclusion of his life. The house in which he lived with his mother had the atmosphere of a monastic cell. As she had devoted herself to her husband, the woman devoted herself to her son, watching him with a hungry eye. He was given to taking long stretches of walks, and appearing in distant villages, book in hand, and with apparently no ulterior object in view. His holidays were nearly all spent out-of-doors in such rambles as these. The country people began to know his tall figure and long stride, and to regard him with the friendly toleration of strength for weakness.

"They say i' Broxton," it was said among them, "as his feyther deed daft, and it's no wonder th' young chap's getten queer ways. He's good-natured enow, though i' a simple road."

His good-nature manifested itself in more than one way which called forth comment. To his early friendship for Janey he remained faithful. The child interested him, and the sentiment developed as it grew older.

It was quite natural that, after a few months' acquaintance, he should drop in at the household of her parents on Saturday afternoon, as he was passing. It was the week's half-holiday and a fine day, and he had nothing else to do. These facts, in connection with that of the Briarley's cottage presenting itself, were reasons enough for going in.

It occurred to him, as he entered the narrow strip of garden before the door, that the children of the neighborhood must have congregated to hold high carnival. Groups made dirt-pies; clusters played "bobber and kibbs;" select parties settled differences of opinions with warmth of feeling and elevation of voice; a youth of tender years, in corduroys which shone with friction, stood upon his head in one corner, calmly but not haughtily presenting to the blue vault of heaven a pair of ponderous, brass-finished clogs.

"What dost want?" he demanded, without altering his position. "Th' missus isn't in."

"I'm going in to see Janey," explained Murdoch.

He found the little kitchen shining with the Saturday "cleaning up." The flagged floor as glaringly spotless as pipe-clay and sandstone could make it, the brass oven-handles and tin pans in a condition to put an intruder out of countenance, the fire replenished, and Janey sitting on a stool on the hearth enveloped in an apron of her mother's, and reading laboriously aloud.

"Eh! dear me!" she exclaimed. "It's yo'—an' I am na fit to be seen. I wur settin' down to rest a bit. I've been doin' th' cleanin' aw day, an' I wur real done fur."

"Never mind that," said Murdoch. "That's all right enough."

He cast about him for a safe position to take—one in which he could stretch his legs and avoid damaging the embarrassing purity of the floor. Finally he settled upon a small print-covered sofa and balanced himself carefully upon its extreme edge and the backs of his heels, notwithstanding Janey's civil protestations.

"Dunnot yo' moind th' floor," she said. "Yo' needn't. Set yo' down comfortable."

"Oh, I'm all right," answered Murdoch, with calm good cheer. "This is comfortable enough. What's that you were reading?"

Janey settled down upon her stool with a sigh at once significant of relief and a readiness to indulge in friendly confidence.

"It's a book I getten fro' th' Broxton Chapel Sunday Skoo'. Its th' Mem—m-e-m-o-i-r-s——"

"Memoirs," responded Murdoch.

"Memoyers of Mary Ann Gibbs."

Unfortunately her visitor was not thoroughly posted on the subject of the Broxton Chapel literature. He cast about him mentally, but with small success.

"I don't seem to have heard of it before," was the conclusion he arrived at.

"Hannot yo'? Well, it's a noice book, an' theer's lots more like it in th' skoo' libery—aw about Sunday skoo' scholars as has consumption an' th' loike an' reads th' boible to foalk an' dees. They aw on 'em dee."

"Oh," doubtfully, but still with respect. "It's not very cheerful, is it?"

Janey shook her head with an expression of mature resignation.

"Eh no! they're none on 'em cheerful—but they're noice to read. This here un now—she had th' asthma an' summat wrong wi' her legs, an' she knowed aw' th' boible through aside o' th' hymn-book, an' she'd sing aw th' toime when she could breathe fur th' asthma, an' tell foak as if they did na go an' do likewise they'd go to burnin' hell wheer th' fire is na quenched an' th' worms dyeth not."

"It can't have been very pleasant for the friends," was her companion's comment. But there was nothing jocose about his manner. He was balancing himself seriously on the edge of the hard little sofa and regarding her with speculative interest.

"Where's your mother?" he asked next.

"Hoo's gone to th' chapel," was the answer. "Theer's a mothers' meetin' in th' vestry, an' hoo's gone theer an' takken th' babby wi' her. Th' rest o' th' childer is playin' out at th' front."

He glanced out of the door.

"Those—those are not all yours?" he said, thunderstruck.

"Aye, they are—that. Eh!" drawing a long breath, "but is na there a lot on 'em? Theer's eleven an' I've nussed 'em nigh ivvery one."

He turned toward the door again.

"There seems to be a great many of them," he remarked. "You must have had a great deal to do."

"That I ha'. I've wished mony a time I'd been a rich lady. Theer's that daughter o' Ffrench's now. Eh! I'd like to ha' bin her."

"I never heard of her before," he answered. "Who is she, and why do you choose her?"

"Cos she's so hansum. She's that theer grand she looks loike she thowt ivvery body else wur dirt. I've seen women as wur bigger, an' wore more cloas at onct, but I nivver seed none as grand as she is. I nivver seed her but onct. She coom here wi' her feyther fer two or three week' afore he went to furrin parts, an' she wur caught i' th' rain one day an' stopped in here a bit. She dropped her hankcher an' mother's getten it yet. It's nigh aw lace. Would yo' loike to see it?" hospitably.

"Yes," feeling his lack of enthusiasm something of a fault. "I—dare say I should."

From the depths of a drawer which she opened with a vigorous effort and some skill in retaining her balance, she produced something pinned up in a fragment of old linen. This she bore to her guest and unpinning it, displayed the handkerchief.

"Tha can tak' it in thy hond an' smell it," she said graciously. "It's getten scent on it."

Murdoch took it in his hand, scarcely knowing what else to do. He knew nothing of women and their finery. He regarded the fragrant bit of lace and cambric seriously, and read in one corner the name "Rachel Ffrench," written in delicate letters. Then he returned it to Janey.

"Thank you," he said, "it is very nice."

Janey bore it back perhaps with some slight inward misgivings as to the warmth of its reception, but also with a tempering recollection of the ways of "men-foak." When she came back to her stool, she changed the subject.

"We've bin havin' trouble lately," she said. "Eh! but I've seed a lot o' trouble i' my day."

"What is the trouble now?" Murdoch asked.

"Feyther. It's allus him. He's getten in wi' a bad lot an' he's drinkin' agen. Seems loike neyther mother nor me con keep him straight fur aw we told him Haworth'll turn him off. Haworth's not goin' to stand his drink an' th' lot he goes wi'. I would na stand it mysen."

"What lot does he go with?"

"Eh!" impatiently, "a lot o' foo's as stands round th' publics an' grumbles at th' mesters an' th' wages they get. An' feyther's one o' these soft uns as believes aw they hears an' has na' getten gumption to think fur his sen. I've looked after him ivver sin' I wur three."

She became even garrulous in her lack of patience, and was in full flow when her mother entered returning from the chapel, with a fagged face, and a large baby on her hip.

"Here, tak' him, Jane Ann," she said; "but tak' off thy apron furst, or tha'lt tumble ower it an' dirty his clean bishop wi' th' muck tha's getten on it. Eh! I am tired. Who's this here?" signifying Murdoch.

"It's Mester Murdoch," said Janey, dropping the apron and taking the child, who made her look top-heavy. "Sit thee down, mother. Yo' needn't moind him. He's a workin' mon hissen."

When Murdoch took his departure, both accompanied him to the door.

"Coom in sometime when th' mester's here," said Mrs. Briarley. "Happen yo' could keep him in a neet an' that ud be summat."

Half way up the lane he met Haworth in his gig, which he stopped.

"Wheer hast tha been?" he asked, dropping into dialect, as he was prone to do.

"To Briarley's cottage, talking to the little girl."

Haworth stared at him a moment, and then burst into a laugh.

"Tha'rt a queer chap," he said. "I can no more than half make thee out. If thy head was not so level, I should think tha wert a bit soft."

"I don't see why," answered Murdoch, undisturbed. "The child interests me. I am not a Lancashire man, remember, and she is a new species."

"Get in," said Haworth, making room for him on the seat.

Murdoch got in, and as they drove on it occurred to him to ask a question.

"Who's Ffrench?"

"Ffrench?" said Haworth. "Oh, Ffrench is one o' th' nobs here. He's a chap with a fancy for being a gentleman-manufacturer. He's spent his brass on his notions, until he has been obliged to draw in his horns a bit. He's never lived much in Broxton, though he's got a pretty big place here. The Continent's the style for him, but he'll turn up here again some day when he's hard up enow. There's his place now."

And as he spoke they drove sharply by a house standing closed among the trees and having an air of desolateness, in spite of the sun-light.

CHAPTER VII. THE "WHO'D HA' THOWT IT?"

"It's th' queerest thing i' th' world," said Mrs. Briarley to her neighbors, in speaking of her visitor,—"it's th' queerest thing i' th' world as he should be a workin' mon. I should ha' thowt he'd ha' wanted to get behind th' counter i' a draper's shop or summat genteel. He'd be a well-lookin' young chap i' a shiny cloth coat an' wi' a blue neck-tie on. Seems loike he does na think enow o' hissen. He'll coom to our house an' set down an' listen to our Janey talkin', an' tell her things out o' books, as simple as if he thowt it wur nowt but what ony chap could do. Theer's wheer he's a bit soft. He knows nowt o' settin' hissen up."

From Mrs. Briarley Murdoch heard numberless stories of Haworth, presenting him in a somewhat startling light.

"Eh! but he's a rare un, is Haworth," said the good woman. "He does na care fur mon nor devil. The carryin's on as he has up at th' big house ud mak' a decent body's hair stond o' eend. Afore he built th' house, he used to go to Lunnon an' Manchester fur his sprees, but he has 'em here now, an' theer's drink an' riotin' an' finery and foak as owt to be shamt o' theirsens. I wonder he is na feart to stay on th' place alone after they're gone."

But for one reason or another the house was quiet enough for the first six months of Murdoch's acquaintance with its master. Haworth gave himself up to the management of the Works. He perfected plans he had laid at a time when the power had not been in his own hands. He kept his eye on his own interests sharply. The most confirmed shirkers on the place found themselves obliged to fall to work, however reluctantly. His bold strokes of business enterprise began to give him wide reputation. In the lapse of its first half year, "Haworth's" gained for itself a name.

At the end of this time, Murdoch arrived at the Works one morning to find a general tone of conviviality reigning. A devil-may-care air showed itself among all the graceless. There was a hint of demoralization in the very atmosphere.

"Where's Haworth?" he asked Floxham, who did not seem to share the general hilarity. "I've not seen him."

"No," was the engineer's answer, "nor tha will na see him yet a bit. A lot o' foo's coom fro' Lunnon last neet. He's on one o' his sprees, an' a nice doment they'll ha' on it afore they're done."

The next morning Haworth dashed down to the Works early in his gig, and spent a short time in his room. Before he left he went to the engine-room, and spoke to Murdoch.

"Is there aught you want from the house—aught in the way o' books, I mean?" he said, with a touch of rough bravado in his manner.

"No," Murdoch answered.

"All right," he returned. "Then keep away, lad, for a day or two."

During the "day or two," Broxton existed in a state of ferment. Gradually an air of disreputable festivity began to manifest itself among all those whose virtue was assailable. There were open "sprees" among these, and their wives, with the inevitable baby in their arms, stood upon their door-steps bewailing their fate, and retailing gossip with no slight zest.

"Silks an' satins, bless yo'," they said. "An' paint an' feathers; th' brazent things, I wonder they are na shamt to show their faces! A noice mester Haworth is to ha' men under him!"

Having occasion to go out late one evening, Murdoch encountered Janey, clad in the big bonnet and shawl, and hurrying along the street.

"Wheer am I goin'?" she echoed sharply in reply to his query. "Why, I'm goin' round to th' publics to look fur feyther—theer's wheer I'm goin'. I hannot seed him sin' dayleet this mornin', an' he's getten th' rent an' th' buryin'-club money wi' him."

"I'll go with you," said Murdoch.

He went with her, making the round of half the public-houses in the village, finally ending at a jovial establishment bearing upon its whitened window the ambiguous title "WHO'D HA' THOWT IT?"

There was a sound of argument accompanied by a fiddle, and an odor of beer supplemented by tobacco. Janey pushed open the door and made her way in, followed by her companion.

An uncleanly, and loud-voiced fellow stood unsteadily at a table, flourishing a clay pipe and making a speech.

"Th' workin' mon," he said. "Theer's too much talk o' th' workin' mon. Is na it bad enow to be a workin' mon, wi'out havin' th' gentry remindin' yo' on it fro' year eend to year eend? Le's ha' less jaw-work an' more paw-work fro' th' gentry. Le's ha' fewer liberys an' athyne-ums, an' more wage—an' holidays—an'—an' beer. Le's pro-gress—tha's wha' I say—an' I'm a workin' mon."

"Ee-er! Ee-er!" cried the chorus. "Ee-er!"

In the midst of the pause following these acclamations, a voice broke in suddenly with startling loudness.

"Ee-er! Ee-er!" it said.

It was Mr. Briarley, who had unexpectedly awakened from a beery nap, and, though much surprised to find out where he was, felt called upon to express his approbation.

Janey hitched her shawl into a manageable length and approached him.

"Tha'rt here?" she said. "I knowed tha would be. Tha'lt worrit th' loife out on us afore tha'rt done. Coom on home wi' me afore tha'st spent ivvery ha'penny we've getten."

Mr. Briarley roused himself so far as to smile at her blandly.

"It's Zhaney," he said, "it's Zhaney. Don' intrup th' meetin', Zhaney. I'll be home dreckly. Mus' na intrup th' workin' mon. He's th' backbone 'n' sinoo o' th' country. Le's ha' a sup more beer."

Murdoch bent over and touched his shoulder.

"You had better come home," he said.

The man looked round at him blankly, but the next moment an exaggerated expression of enlightenment showed itself on his face.

"Iss th' 'Merican," he said. "Iss Murdoch." And then, with sudden bibulous delight: "Gi' us a speech 'bout 'Merica."

In a moment there was a clamor all over the room. The last words had been spoken loudly enough to be heard, and the idea presented itself to the members of the assembly as a happy one.

"Aye," they cried. "Le's ha' a speech fro' th' 'Merican. Le's hear summat fro' 'Merica. Theer's wheer th's laborin' mon has his dues."

Murdoch turned about and faced the company.

"You all know enough of me to know whether I am a speech-making man or not," he said. "I have nothing to say about America, and if I had I should not say it here. You are not doing yourselves any good. The least fellow among you has brains enough to tell him that."

There was at once a new clamor, this time one of dissatisfaction. The speech-maker with the long clay, who was plainly the leader, expressed himself with heat and scorn.

"He's a noice chap—he is," he cried. "He'll ha' nowt to do wi' us. He's th' soart o' workin' mon to ha' abowt, to play th' pianny an' do paintin' i' velvet. 'Merica be danged! He's more o' th' gentry koind to-day than Haworth. Haworth does tak' a decent spree now an' then; but this heer un—— Ax him to tak' a glass o' beer an' see what he'll say."

Disgust was written upon every countenance, but no one proffered the hospitality mentioned. Mr. Briarley had fallen asleep again, murmuring suggestively, "Aye, le's hear summat fro' 'Merica. Le's go to 'Merica. Pu-r on thy bonnet, lass, pur—it on."

With her companion's assistance, Janey got him out of the place and led him home.

"Haaf th' rent's gone," she said, when she turned out his pockets, as he sat by the fire. "An' wheer's th' buryin' money to coom fro'?"

Mr. Briarley shook his head mournfully.

"Th' buryin' money," he said. "Aye, i'deed. A noice thing it is fur a poor chap to ha' to cut off his beer to pay fur his coffin by th' week,—wastin' good brass on summat he may nivver need as long as he lives. I dunnot loike th' thowt on it, eyther. It's bad enow to ha' to get into th' thing at th' eend, wi'out ha'in' it lugged up to th' door ivvery Saturday, an' payin' fur th' ornymentin' on it by inches."

CHAPTER VIII. MR. FFRENCH.

It was a week before affairs assumed their accustomed aspect. Not that the Works had been neglected, however. Each morning Haworth had driven down early and spent an hour in his office and about the place, reading letters, issuing orders and keeping a keen look-out generally.

"I'll have no spreeing here among you chaps," he announced. "Spree as much as you like when th' work's done, but you don't spree in my time. Look sharp after 'em, Kendal."

The day after his guests left him he appeared at his usual time, and sent at once for Murdoch.

On his arriving he greeted him, leaning back in his chair, his hands thrust into his pockets.

"Well, lad," he said, "it's over."

Almost unconsciously, Murdoch thrust his hands into his pockets also, but the action had rather a reflective than a defiant expression.

"It's lasted a pretty long time, hasn't it?" he remarked.

Haworth answered him with a laugh.

"Egad! You take it cool enough," he said.

Suddenly he got up and began to walk about, his air a mixture of excitement and braggadocio. After a turn or two he wheeled about.

"Why don't you say summat?" he demanded, sardonically. "Summat moral. You don't mean to tell me you've not got pluck enow?"

"I don't see," said Murdoch, deliberately,—"I don't see that there's anything to say. Do you?"

The man stared at him, reddening. Then he turned about and flung himself into his chair again.

"No," he answered. "By George! I don't."

They discussed the matter no further. It seemed to dispose of itself. Their acquaintance went on in the old way, but there were moments afterward when Murdoch felt that the man regarded him with something that might have been restrained or secret fear—a something which held him back and made him silent and unready of speech. Once, in the midst of a conversation taking a more confidential tone than usual, to his companion's astonishment he stopped and spoke bluntly:

"If I say aught as goes against the grain with you," he said, "speak up, lad. Blast it!" striking his fist hard against his palm, "I'd like to show my clean side to you."

It was at this time that he spoke first of his mother.

"When I run away from the poor-house," he said, "I left her there. She's a soft-hearted body—a good one too. As soon as I earned my first fifteen shillin' a week, I gave her a house of her own—and I lived hard to do it. She lives like a lady now, though she's as simple as ever. She knows naught of the world, and she knows naught of me beyond what she sees of me when I go down to the little country-place in Kent with a new silk gown and a lace cap for her. She scarce ever wears 'em, but she's as fond on 'em as if she got 'em from Buckingham Palace. She thinks I'm a lad yet, and say my prayers every night and the catechism on Sundays. She'll never know aught else, if I can help it. That's why I keep her where she is."

When he said that he intended to make "Haworth's" second to no place in England, he had not spoken idly. His pride in the place was a passion. He spent money lavishly but shrewdly; he paid his men well, but ruled them with an iron hand. Those of his fellow-manufacturers who were less bold and also less keen-sighted, regarded him with no small disfavor.

"He'll have trouble yet, that Haworth fellow," they said.

But "Haworth's" flourished and grew. The original works were added to, and new hands, being called for, flocked into Broxton with their families. It was Jem Haworth who built the rows of cottages to hold them, and he built them well and substantially, but as a sharp business investment and a matter of pride rather than from any weakness of regarding them from a moral stand-point.

"I'll have no poor jobs done on my place," he announced. "I'll leave that to the gentlemen manufacturers."

It was while in the midst of this work that he received a letter from Gerard Ffrench, who was still abroad.

Going into his room one day Murdoch found him reading it and looking excited.

"Here's a chap as would be the chap for me," he said, "if brass were iron—that chap Ffrench."

"What does he want?" Murdoch asked.

"Naught much," grimly. "He's got a notion of coming back here, and he'd like to go into partnership with me. That's what he's drivin' at. He'd like to be a partner with Jem Haworth."

"What has he to offer?"

"Cheek, and plenty on it. He says his name's well known, and he's got influence as well as practical knowledge. I'd like to have a bit of a talk with him."

Suddenly he struck his fist on the table before him.

"I've got a name that's enow for me," he said. "The day's to come yet when I ask any chap for name or money or aught else. Partner be damned! This here's 'Haworth's!'"

CHAPTER IX. "NOT FOR ONE HOUR."

The meetings of the malcontents continued to be held at the "Who'd ha' thowt it," and were loud voiced and frequent, but notwithstanding their frequency and noisiness resulted principally in a disproportionate consumption of beer and tobacco and in some differences of opinion, decided in a gentlemanly manner with the assistance of "backers" and a ring.

Having been rescued from these surroundings by Murdoch on several convivial occasions, Briarley began to anticipate his appearance with resignation if not cheerfulness, and to make preparations accordingly.

"I mun lay a sup in reet at th' start," he would say. "Theer's no knowin' how soon he'll turn up if he drops in to see th' women. Gi' me a glass afore these chaps, Mary. They con wait a bit."

"Why does tha stand it, tha foo'?" some independent spirit would comment. "Con th' chap carry thee whoam if tha does na want to go?"

But Briarley never rebelled. Resistance was not his forte. If it were possible to become comfortably drunk before he was sought out and led away he felt it a matter for mild self-gratulation, but he bore defeat amiably.

"Th' missis wants me," he would say unsteadily but with beaming countenance, on catching sight of Murdoch or Janey. "Th' missis has sent to ax me to go an'—an' set wi' her a bit. I mun go, chaps. A man munna negleck his fam'ly."

In response to Mrs. Briarley's ratings and Janey's querulous appeals, it was his habit to shed tears copiously and with a touch of ostentation.

"I'm a poor chap, missus," he would say. "I'm a poor chap. Yo' munnot be hard on me. I nivver wur good enow fur a woman loike yoursen. I should na wonder if I had to join th' teetotals after aw. Tha knows it allus rains o' Whit-Saturday, when they ha' their walk, an' that theer looks as if th' Almoighty wur on th' teetotal soide. It's noan loike he'd go to so mich trouble if he were na."

At such crises as these "th' women foak," as he called his wife and Janey, derived their greatest consolation from much going to chapel.

"If it wur na fur th' bit o' comfort I get theer," said the poor woman, "I should na know whether I wur standin' on my head or my heels—betwixt him, an' th' work, an' th' childer."

"Happen ye'd loike to go wi' us," said Janey to Murdoch, one day. "Yo'll be sure to hear a good sermont."

Murdoch went with them, and sat in a corner of their free seat—a hard one, with a straight and unrelenting back. But he was not prevented by the seat from being interested and even absorbed by the doctrine. He had an absent-minded way of absorbing impressions, and the unemotional tenor of his life had left him singularly impartial. He did not finally decide that the sermon was good, bad, or indifferent, but he pondered on it and its probable effects deeply, and with no little curiosity. It was a long sermon, and one which "hit straight from the shoulder." It displayed a florid heaven and a burning hell. It was literal, and well garnished with telling and scriptural quotations. Once or twice during its delivery Murdoch glanced at Janey and Mrs. Briarley. The woman, during intervals of eager pacifying of the big baby, lifted her pale face and listened devoutly. Janey sat respectable and rigorous, her eyes fixed upon the pulpit, her huge shawl folded about her, her bonnet slipping backward at intervals, and requiring to be repeatedly rearranged by a smart hustling somewhere in the region of the crown.

The night was very quiet when they came out into the open air. The smoke-clouds of the day had been driven away by a light breeze, and the sky was bright with stars. Mrs. Briarley and the ubiquitous baby joined a neighbor and hastened home, but Murdoch and Janey lingered a little.

"My father is buried here," Murdoch had said, and Janey had answered with sharp curiousness,—

"Wheer's th' place? I'd loike to see it. Has tha getten a big head-stone up?"

She was somewhat disappointed to find there was none, and that nothing but the sod covered the long mound, but she appeared to comprehend the state of affairs at once.

"I s'pose tha'lt ha' one after a bit," she said, "when tha'rt not so short as tha art now. Ivverybody's short i' these toimes."

She seated herself upon the stone coping of the next grave, her elbow on her knee, a small, weird figure in the uncertain light.

"I allus did loike a big head-stone," she remarked, reflectively. "Theer's summat noice about a big white un wi' black letters on it. I loike a white un th' best, an' ha' th' letters cut deep, an' th' name big, an' a bit o' poitry at th' eend:

'Stranger, a moment linger near,

An' hark to th' one as moulders here;

Thy bones, loike mine, shall rot i' th' ground,

Until th' last awful trumpet's sound;

Thy flesh, loike mine, fa' to decay,

For mon is made to pass away.'

Summat loike that. But yo' see it ud be loike to cost so much. What wi' th' stone an' paint an' cuttin', I should na wonder if it would na coom to th' matter o' two pound—an' then theer's th' funeral."

She ended with a sigh, and sank for a moment into a depressed reverie, but in the course of a few moments she roused herself again.

"Tell me summat about thy feyther," she demanded.

Murdoch bent down and plucked a blade of grass with a rather uncertain grasp.

"There isn't much to tell," he answered. "He was unfortunate, and had a hard life—and died."

Janey looked at his lowered face with a sharp, unchildish twinkle in her eye.

"Would tha moind me axin thee summat?" she said.

"No."

But she hesitated a little before she put the question.

"Is it—wur it true—as he wur na aw theer—as he wur a bit—a bit soft i' th' yed?"

"No, that is not true."

"I'm glad it is na," she responded. "Art tha loike him?"

"I don't know."

"I hope tha art na, if he did na ha' luck. Theer's a great deal i' luck." Then, with a quick change of subject,—"How did tha loike th' sermont?"

"I am not sure," he answered, "that I know that either. How did you like it yourself?"

"Ay," with an air of elderly approval, "it wur a good un. Mester Hixon allus gi'es us a good un. He owts wi' what he's getten to say. I loike a preacher as owts wi' it."

A few moments later, when they rose to go home, her mind seemed suddenly to revert to a former train of thought.

"Wur theer money i' that thing thy feyther wur tryin' at?" she asked.

"Not for him, it seemed."

"Ay; but theer mought be fur thee. Tha mayst ha' more in thee than he had, an' mought mak' summat on it. I'd nivver let owt go as had money i' it. Tha'dst mak' a better rich mon than Haworth."

After leaving her Murdoch did not go home. He turned his back upon the village again, and walked rapidly away from it, out on the country road and across field paths, and did not turn until he was miles from Broxton.

Of late he had been more than usually abstracted. He had been restless, and at times nervously unstrung. He had slept ill, and spent his days in a half-conscious mood. More than once, as they walked together, Floxham had spoken to him amazed.

"What's up wi' thee, lad?" he had said. "Art dazed, or hast tha takken a turn an' been on a spree?"

One night, when they were together, Haworth had picked up from the floor a rough but intricate-looking drawing, and, on handing it to him, had been bewildered by his sudden change of expression.

"Is it aught of yours?" he had asked.

"Yes," the young fellow had answered; "it's mine."

But, instead of replacing it in his pocket, he had torn it slowly into strips, and thrown it, piece by piece, into the fire, watching it as it burned.

It was not Janey's eminently practical observations which had stirred him to-night. He had been drifting toward this feverish crisis of feeling for months, and had contested its approach inch by inch. There were hours when he was overpowered by the force of what he battled against, and this was one of them.

It was nearly midnight when he returned, and his mother met him at the door with an anxious look. It was a look he had seen upon her face all his life; but its effect upon himself had never lessened from the day he had first recognized it, as a child.

"I did not think you would wait for me," he said. "It is later than I thought."

"I am not tired," she answered.

She had aged a little since her husband's death, but otherwise she had not changed. She looked up at her son just as she had looked at his father,—watchfully, but saying little.

"Are you going to bed?"

"I am going upstairs," he replied. But he did not say that he was going to bed.

He bade her good-night shortly afterward, and went to his room. It was the one his father had used before his death, and the trunk containing his belongings stood in one corner of it.

For a short time after entering the room he paced the floor restlessly and irregularly. Sometimes he walked quickly, sometimes slowly; once or twice he stopped short, checking himself as he veered toward the corner in which stood the unused trunk.

"I'm in a queer humor," he said aloud. "I'm thinking of it as if—as if it were a temptation to sin. Why should I?"

He made a sudden resolute movement forward. He knelt down, and, turning the key in the lock, flung the trunk-lid backward.

There was only one thing he wanted, and he knew where to find it. It lay buried at the bottom, under the unused garments, which gave forth a faint, damp odor as he moved them. When he rose from his knees he held the wooden case in his hand. After he had carried it to the table and opened it, and the model stood again before him he sat down and stared at it with a numb sense of fascination.

"I thought I had seen the last of it," he said; "and here it is."

Even as he spoke he felt his blood warm within him, and flush his cheek. His hand trembled as he put it forth to touch and move the frame-work before him. He felt as if it were a living creature. His eye kindled, and he bent forward.

"There's something to be done with it yet," he said. "It's not a blunder, I'll swear!"

He was hot with eagerness and excitement. The thing had haunted him day and night for weeks. He had struggled to shake off its influence, but in vain. He had told himself that the temptation to go back to it and ponder over it was the working of a morbid taint in his blood. He had remembered the curse it had been, and had tried to think of that only; but it had come back to him again and again, and—here it was.

He spent an hour over it, and in the end his passionate eagerness had grown rather than diminished. He put his hand up to his forehead and brushed away drops of moisture, his throat was dry, and his eyes strained.

"There's something to be brought out of it yet," he said, as he had said before. "It can be done, I swear!"

The words had scarcely left his lips before he heard behind him a low, but sharp cry—a miserable ejaculation, half uttered.

He had not heard the door open, nor the entering footsteps; but he knew what the cry meant the moment he heard it. He turned about and saw his mother standing on the threshold. If he had been detected in the commission of a crime, he could not have felt a sharper pang than he did. He almost staggered against the wall and did not utter a word. For a moment they looked at each other in a dead silence. Each wore in the eyes of the other a new aspect. She pointed to the model.

"It has come back," she said. "I knew it would."

The young fellow turned and looked at it a little stupidly.

"I—didn't mean to hurt you with the sight of it," he said. "I took it out because—because——"

She stopped him with a movement of her head.

"Yes, I know," she said. "You took it out because it has haunted you and tempted you. You could not withstand it. It is in your blood."

He had known her through all his life as a patient creature, whose very pains had bent themselves and held themselves in check, lest they should seem for an hour to stand in the way of the end to be accomplished. That she had, even in the deepest secrecy, rebelled against fate, he had never dreamed.

She came to the table and struck the model aside with one angry blow.

"Shall I tell you the truth?" she cried, panting. "I have never believed in it for an hour—not for one hour!"

He could only stammer out a few halting words.

"This is all new to me," he said. "I did not know——"

"No, you did not know," she answered. "How should you, when I lived my whole life to hide it? I have been stronger than you thought. I bore with him, as I should have borne with him if he had been maimed or blind—or worse than that. I did not hurt him—he had hurt enough. I knew what the end would be. He would have been a happy man and I a happy woman, if it had not been for that, and there it is again. I tell you," passionately, "there is a curse on it!"

"And you think," he said, "that it has fallen upon me?"

She burst into wild tears.

"I have told myself it would," she said. "I have tried to prepare myself for its coming some day; but I did not think it would show itself so soon as this."

"I don't know why," he said slowly. "I don't know—what there is in me that I should think I might do what he left undone. There seems a kind of vanity in it."

"It is not vanity," she said; "it is worse. It is what has grown out of my misery and his. I tell you it is in your blood."

A flush rose to his face, and a stubborn look settled upon him.

"Perhaps it is," he answered. "I have told myself that, too."

She held her closed hand upon her heart, as if to crush down its passionate heavings.

"Begin as he began," she cried, "and the end will come to you as it came to him. Give it up now—now!"

"Give it up!" he repeated after her.

"Give it up," she answered, "or give up your whole life, your youth, your hope,—all that belongs to it."

She held out her hands to him in a wild, unconsciously theatrical gesture. The whole scene had been theatrical through its very incongruousness, and Murdoch had seen this vaguely, and been more shaken by it than anything else.

Before she knew what he meant to do, he approached the table, and replaced the model in its box, the touch of stubborn desperateness on him yet. He carried the case back to the trunk, and shut it in once more.

"I'll let it rest a while," he said; "I'll promise you that. If it is ever to be finished by me, the time will come when it will see the light again, in spite of us both."

CHAPTER X. CHRISTIAN MURDOCH.

As he was turning into the gate of the Works the next morning, a little lad touched him upon the elbow.

"Mester," he said, "sithee, Mester,—stop a bit."

He was out of breath, as if he had been running, and he held in his hand a slip of paper.

"I thowt I should na ketch thee," he said, "tha'rt so long-legged. A woman sent thee that," and he gave him the slip of paper.

Murdoch opened and read the words written upon it.

"If you are Stephen Murdoch's son, I must see you. Come with the child."

There was no signature—only these words, written irregularly and weakly. He had never met with an adventure in his life, and this was like an episode in a romance.

"If you are Stephen Murdoch's son, I must see you."

He could scarcely realize that he was standing in the narrow, up-hill street, jostled by the hands shouting and laughing as they streamed past him through the gates to their work.

And yet, somehow he found himself taking it more coolly than seemed exactly natural. This morning, emotion and event appeared less startling than they would have done even the day before. The strange scene of the past night had, in a manner, prepared him for anything which might happen.

"Who sent it?" he asked of the boy.

"Th' woman as lodges i' our house. She's been theer three days, an' she's getten to th' last, mother says. Con tha coom? She's promist me a shillin' if I browt thee."

"Wait here a minute," said Murdoch.

He passed into the works and went to Floxham.

"I've had a message that calls me away," he said. "If you can spare me for an hour——"

"I'll mak' out," said the engineer.

The lad at the gate looked up with an encouraging grin when he saw his charge returning.

"I'd loike to mak' th' shillin'," he said.

Murdoch followed him in silence. He was thinking of what was going to happen to himself scarcely as much as of the dead man in whose name he was called upon. He was brought near to him again as if it were by a fate. "If you are Stephen Murdoch's son," had moved him strongly.

Their destination was soon reached. It was a house in a narrow but respectable street occupied chiefly by a decent class of workmen and their families. A week before he had seen in the window of this same house a card bearing the legend "Lodgings to Let," and now it was gone. A clean, motherly woman opened the door for them.

"Tha'st earnt thy shillin', has tha, tha young nowt?" she said to the lad, with friendly severity. "Coom in, Mester. I wur feart he'd get off on some of his marocks an' forget aw about th' paper. She's i' a bad way, poor lady, an' th' lass is na o' mich use. Coom up-stairs."

She led the way to the second floor, and her knock being answered by a voice inside, she opened the door. The room was comfortable and of good size, a fire burned on the grate, and before it sat a girl with her hands clasped upon her knee.

She was a girl of nineteen, dark of face and slight of figure to thinness. When she turned her head slowly to look at him, Murdoch was struck at once with the peculiar steadiness of her large black eyes.

"She is asleep," she said in a low, cold voice.

There was a sound as of movement in the bed.

"I am awake," some one said. "If it is Stephen Murdoch's son, let him come here."

Murdoch went to the bedside and stood looking down at the woman who returned his gaze. She was a woman whose last hours upon earth were passing rapidly. Her beauty was now only something terrible to see; her breath came fast and short; her eyes met his with a look of anguish.

"Send the girl away," she said to him.

Low as her voice was, the girl heard it. She rose without turning to right or left and went out of the room.

Until the door closed the woman still lay looking up into her visitor's face, but as soon as it was shut she spoke laboriously.

"What is your name?" she asked.

He told her.

"You are like your father," she said, and then closed her eyes and lay so for a moment. "It is a mad thing I am doing," she said, knitting her brows with weak fretfulness, and still lying with closed eyes. "I—I do not know—why I should have done it—only that it is the last thing. It is not that I am fond of the girl—or that she is fond of me," she opened her eyes with a start. "Is the door shut?" she said. "Keep her out of the room."

"She is not here," he answered, "and the door is closed."

The sight of his face seemed to help her to recover herself.

"What am I saying?" she said. "I have not told you who I am."

"No," he replied, "not yet."

"My name was Janet Murdoch," she said. "I was your father's cousin. Once he was very fond of me."

She drew from under her pillow a few old letters.

"Look at them," she said; "he wrote them."

But he only glanced at the superscription and laid them down again.

"I did not know," she panted, "that he was dead. I hoped he would be here. I knew that he must have lived a quiet life. I always thought of him as living here in the old way."

"He was away from here for thirty years," said Murdoch. "He only came back to die."

"He!" she said, "I never thought of that. It—seems very strange. I could not imagine his going from place to place—or living a busy life—or suffering much. He was so simple and so quiet."

"I thought of him," she went on, "because he was a good man—a good man—and there was no one else in the world. As the end came I grew restless—I wanted to—to try——"

But there her eyes closed and she forgot herself again.

"What was it you wanted to try to do?" he asked gently.

She roused herself, as before, with a start.

"To try," she said,—"to try to do something for the girl."

He did not understand what she meant until she had dragged herself up upon the pillow and leaned forward touching him with her hand; she had gathered all her strength for the effort.

"I am an outcast," she said,—"an outcast!"

The simple and bare words were so terrible that he could scarcely bear them, but he controlled himself by a strong effort.

A faint color crept up on her cheek.

"You don't understand," she said.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "I think I do."

She fell back upon her pillows.

"I wont tell you the whole story," she said. "It is an ugly one, and she will be ready enough with it when her turn comes. She has understood all her life. She has never been a child. She seemed to fasten her eyes upon me from the hour of her birth, and I have felt them ever since. Keep her away," with a shudder. "Don't let her come in."

A sudden passion of excitement seized upon her.

"I don't know why I should care," she cried. "There is no reason why she should not live as I have lived—but she will not—she will not. I have reached the end and she knows it. She sits and looks on and says nothing, but her eyes force me to speak. They forced me to come here—to try—to make a last effort. If Stephen Murdoch had lived——"

She stopped a moment.

"You are a poor man," she said.

"Yes," he answered. "I am a mechanic."

"Then—you cannot—do it."

She spoke helplessly, wildly.

"There is nothing to be done. There is no one else. She will be all alone."

Then he comprehended her meaning fully.

"No," he said, "I am not so poor as that. I am not a poorer man than my father was, and I can do what he would have done had he lived. My mother will care for the girl, if that is what you wish."

"What I wish!" she echoed. "I wish for nothing—but I must do something for her—before—before—before——"

She broke off, but began again.

"You are like your father. You make things seem simple. You speak as if you were undertaking nothing."

"It is not much to do," he answered, "and we could not do less. I will go to my mother and tell her that she is needed here. She will come to you."

She turned her eyes on him in terror.

"You think," she whispered, "that I shall die soon—soon!"

He did not answer her. He could not. She wrung her hands and dashed them open upon the bed, panting.

"Oh," she cried, "my God! It is over! I have come to the end of it—the end! To have only one life—and to have done with it—and lie here! To have lived—and loved—and triumphed, and to know it is over! One may defy all the rest, the whole world, but not this. It is done!"

Then she turned to him again, desperately.

"Go to your mother," she said. "Tell her to come. I want some one in the room with me. I wont be left alone with her. I cannot bear it."

On going out he found the girl sitting at the head of the stairs. She rose and stood aside to let him pass, looking at him unflinchingly.

"Are you coming back?" she demanded.

"Yes," he answered, "I am coming back."

In half an hour he re-ascended the staircase, bringing his mother with him. When they entered the room in which the dying woman lay, Mrs. Murdoch went to the bed and bent over her.

"My son has brought me to do what I can for you," she said, "and to tell you that he will keep his promise."

The woman looked up. For a moment it seemed that she had forgotten. A change had come upon her even in the intervening half-hour.

"His promise," she said. "Yes, he will keep it."

At midnight she died. Mother and son were in the room, the girl sat in a chair at the bedside. Her hands were clasped upon her knee; she sat without motion. At a few minutes before the stroke of twelve, the woman awoke from the heavy sleep in which she had lain. She awoke with a start and a cry, and lay staring at the girl, whose steady eyes were fixed upon her. Her lips moved, and at last she spoke.

"Forgive me!" she cried. "Forgive me!"

Murdoch and his mother rose, but the girl did not stir.

"For what?" she asked.

"For—" panted the woman, "for——"

But the sentence remained unfinished. The girl did not utter a word. She sat looking at the dying woman in silence—only looking at her, not once moving her eyes from the face which, a moment later, was merely a mask of stone which lay upon the pillow, gazing back at her with a fixed stare.

CHAPTER XI. MISS FFRENCH RETURNS.

They took the girl home with them, and three days later the Ffrenchs returned. They came entirely unheralded, and it was Janey who brought the news of their arrival to the Works.

"They've coom," she said, in passing Murdoch on her way to her father. "Mester Ffrench an' her. They rode through th' town this mornin' i' a kerridge. Nobody knowed about it till they seed 'em."

The news was the principal topic of conversation through the day, and the comments made were numerous and varied. The most general opinions were that Ffrench was in a "tight place," or had "getten some crank i' hond."

"He's noan fond enow o' th' place to ha' coom back fur nowt," said Floxham. "He's a bit harder up than common, that's it."

In the course of the morning Haworth came in. Murdoch was struck with his unsettled and restless air; he came in awkwardly, and looking as if he had something to say, but though he loitered about some time, he did not say it.

"Come up to the house to-night," he broke out at last. "I want company."

It occurred to Murdoch that he wished to say more, but, after lingering for a few minutes, he went away. As he crossed the threshold, however, he paused uneasily.

"I say," he said, "Ffrench has come back."

"So I heard," Murdoch answered.

When he presented himself at the house in the evening, Haworth was alone as usual. Wines were on the table, and he seemed to have drunk deeply. He was flushed, and showed still the touch of uneasiness and excitement he had betrayed in the morning.

"I'm glad you've come," he said. "I'm out of sorts—or something."

He ended with a short laugh, and turned about to pour out a glass of wine. In doing so his hand trembled so that a few drops fell upon it. He shook them off angrily.

"What's up with me?" he said.

He drained the glass at a draught, and filled it again.

"I saw Ffrench to-day," he said. "I saw them both."

"Both!" repeated Murdoch, wondering at him.

"Yes. She is with him."

"She!" and then remembering the episode of the handkerchief, he added, rather slowly, "You mean Miss Ffrench?"

Haworth nodded.

He was pushing his glass to and fro with shaking hands, his voice was hoarse and uncertain.

"I passed the carriage on the road," he said, "and Ffrench stopped it to speak to me. He's not much altered. I never saw her before. She's a woman now—and a handsome woman, by George!"

The last words broke from him as if he could not control them. He looked up at Murdoch, and as their eyes met he seemed to let himself loose.

"I may as well make a clean breast of it," he said. "I'm—I'm hard hit. I'm hard hit."

Murdoch flinched. He would rather not have heard the rest. He had had emotion enough during the last few days, and this was of a kind so novel that he was overwhelmed by it. But Haworth went on.

"It's a queer thing," he said. "I can't quite make it out. I—I feel as if I must talk—about it—and yet there's naught to say. I've seen a woman that's—that's taken hold on me."

He passed his hands across his lips, which were parched and stiff.

"You know the kind of a fellow I've been," he said. "I've known women enough, and too many; but there's never been one like this. There's always been plenty like the rest. I sat and stared at this one like a blockhead. She set me trembling. It came over me all at once. I don't know what Ffrench thought. I said to myself, 'Here's the first woman that ever held me back.' She's one of your high kind, that's hard to get nigh. She's got a way to set a man mad. She'll be hard to get at, by George!"

Murdoch felt his pulse start. The man's emotion had communicated itself to him, so far at least.

"I don't know much of women," he said. "I've not been thrown among them; I——"

"No," said Haworth roughly, "they're not in your line, lad. If they were, happen I shouldn't be so ready to speak out."

Then he began and told his story more minutely, relating how, as he drove to the Works, he had met the carriage, and Ffrench had caught sight of him and ordered the servant to stop; how he had presented his daughter, and spoken as if she had heard of him often before; how she had smiled a little, but had said nothing.

"She's got a way which makes a man feel as if she was keeping something back, and sets him to wondering what it is. She's not likely to be forgot soon; she gives a chap something to think over."

He talked fast and heatedly, and sometimes seemed to lose himself. Now and then he stopped, and sat brooding a moment in silence, and then roused himself with a start, and drank more wine and grew more flushed and excited. After one of these fitful reveries, he broke out afresh.

"I—wonder what folk'll say to her of me. They wont give me an over good name, I'll warrant. What a fool I've been! What a d—— fool I've been all my life! Let them say what they like. They'll make me black enough; but there is plenty would like to stand in Jem Haworth's shoes. I've never been beat yet. I've stood up and held my own,—and women like that. And as to th' name," with rough banter, "it's not chaps like you they fancy, after all."

"As to that," said Murdoch coldly, "I've told you I know nothing of women."

He felt restive without knowing why. He was glad when he could free himself and get out into the fresh night air; it seemed all the fresher after the atmosphere he had breathed in-doors.

The night was bright and mild. After cold, un-springlike weather had come an ephemeral balminess. The moon was at full, and he stepped across the threshold into a light as clear as day.

He walked rapidly, scarcely noting the road he passed over until he had reached the house which stood alone among its trees,—the house Haworth had pointed out a few months before. It was lighted now, and its lights attracted his attention.

"It's a brighter-looking place than it was then," he said.

He never afterward could exactly recall how it was that at this moment he started, turned, and for a breath's space came to a full stop.

He had passed out of the shadow of the high boundary wall into the broad moonlight which flooded the gate-way. The iron gates were open, and a white figure stood in the light—the figure of a tall young woman who did not move.

He was so near that her dress almost touched him. In another moment he was hurrying along the road again, not having spoken, and scarcely understanding the momentary shock he had received.

"That," he said to himself,—"that was she!"

When he reached home and opened the door of the little parlor, Christian Murdoch was sitting alone by the dying fire in the grate. She turned and looked at him.

"Something," she said, "has happened to you. What is it?"

"I don't know," he answered, "that anything has happened to me—anything of importance."

She turned to the fire again and sat gazing at it, rubbing the back of one hand slowly with the palm of the other, as it lay on her knee.

"Something has happened to me," she said. "To-day I have seen some one I know."

"Some one you know?" he echoed. "Here?"

She nodded her head.

"Some one I know," she repeated, "though I do not know her name. I should like to know it."

"Her name," he said. "Then it is a woman?"

"Yes, a woman—a young woman. I saw her abroad—four—five times."

She began to check off the number of times on her fingers.

"In Florence once," she said. "In Munich twice; in Paris—yes, in Paris twice again."

"When and how?" he asked.

As he spoke, he thought of the unruffled serenity of the face he had just seen.

"Years ago, the first time," she answered, without the least change of tone, "in a church in Florence. I went in because I was wet and cold and hungry, and it was light and warm there. I was a little thing, and left to ramble in the streets. I liked the streets better than my mother's room. I was standing in the church, looking at the people and trying to feel warm, when a girl came in with a servant. She was handsome and well dressed, and looked almost like a woman. When she saw me, she laughed. I was such a little thing, and so draggled and forlorn. That was why she laughed. The next year I saw her again, at Munich. Her room was across the street and opposite mine, and she sat at the window, amusing herself by playing with her dog and staring at me. She had forgotten me, but I had not forgotten her; and she laughed at me again. In Paris it was the same thing. Our windows were opposite each other again. It was five years after, but that time she knew me, though she pretended she did not. She drove past the house to-day, and I saw her. I should like to know her name."

"I think I can tell you what it is," he said. "She is a Miss Ffrench. Her father is a Broxton man. They have a place here."

"Have they?" she asked. "Will they live here?"

"I believe so," he answered.

She sat for a moment, rubbing her hand slowly as before, and then she spoke.

"So much the worse," she said,—"so much the worse for me."

She went up to her room when she left him. It was a little room in the second story, and she had become fond of it. She often sat alone there. She had been sitting at its window when Rachel Ffrench had driven by in the afternoon. The window was still open she saw as she entered, and a gust of wind passing through it had scattered several light articles about the floor. She went to pick them up. They were principally loose papers, and as she bent to raise the first one she discovered that it was yellow with age and covered with a rough drawing of some mechanical appliance. Another and another presented the same plan—drawn again and again, elaborately and with great pains at times, and then hastily as if some new thought had suggested itself. On several were written dates, and on others a few words.

She was endeavoring to decipher some of these faintly written words when a fresh gust of rising wind rushed past her as she stood, and immediately there fell upon her ear a slight ghostly rustle. Near her was a small unused closet whose door had been thrown open, and as she turned toward it there fluttered from one of the shelves a sheet of paper yellower than the rest. She picked it up and read the words written upon the back of the drawing. They had been written twenty-six years before.

"To-day the child was born. It is a boy. By the time he is a year old my work will be done."

The girl's heart began to beat quickly. The papers rustled again, and a kind of fear took possession of her.

"He wrote it," she said aloud. "The man who is dead—who is dead; and it was not finished at all."

She closed the window, eager to shut out the wind; then she closed the door and went back to the papers. Her fancies concerning Stephen Murdoch had taken very definite shape from the first. She knew two things of him; that he had been gentle and unworldly, and that he had cherished throughout his life a hope which had eluded him until death had come between him and his patient and unflagging labor.

The sight of the yellow faded papers moved her to powerful feeling. She had never had a friend; she had stood alone from her earliest childhood, and here was a creature who had been desolate too—who must have been desolate, since he had been impelled to write the simple outcome of his thoughts again and again upon the paper he wrought on, as if no human being had been near to hear. It was this which touched her most of all. There was scarcely a sheet upon which some few words were not written. Each new plan bore its date, and some hopeful or weary thought. He had been tired often, but never faithless to his belief. The end was never very far off. A few days, one more touch, would bring it,—and then he had forgotten all the past.

"I can afford to forget it," he said once. "It only seems strange now that it should have lasted so long when so few steps remain to be taken."

These words had been written on his leaving America. He was ready for his departure. They were the last record. When she had read them, Christian pushed the papers away and sat gazing into space with dilated eyes.

"He died," she said. "He is dead. Nothing can bring him back; and it is forgotten."

CHAPTER XII. GRANNY DIXON.

The next time Janey brought her father's dinner to the Yard she sought out Murdoch in a dejected mood. She found him reading over his lunch in the sunshine, and she sat down opposite to him, folding her arms on her lap.

"We're i' trouble again at our house," she said. "We're allus i' trouble. If it is na one thing, it's another."

Murdoch shut his book and leaned back upon his pile of lumber to listen. He always listened.

"What is it this time?"

"This toime?" querulously. "This is th' worst o' th' lot. Granny Dixon's come back."

"Granny Dixon?"

Janey shook her head.

"Tha knows nowt about her," she said. "I nivver towd thee nowt. She's my feyther's grandmother an' she's ower ninety years owd, an' she's getten money. If it wur na fur that no one ud stond her, but"—with a sigh—"foak conna turn away brass."

Having relieved herself of this sentiment she plunged into the subject with fresh asperity.

"Theer's no knowin' how to tak' her," she said. "Yo' mun shout at th' top o' yore voice to mak' her hear. An' she wunnot let nowt go by. She mun hear aw as is goin'. She's out wi' Mester Hixon at th' chapel because she says she conna hear him an' he does it a-purpose. When she wur out wi' ivverybody else she used to say she wur goin' to leave her brass to him, an' she invited him to tea ivvery neet fur a week, an' had him set by her chair an' talk. It wur summer toime an' I've seed him set an' shout wi' th' sweat a-pourin' down his face an' his neck-tie aw o' one soide, an' at th' eend o' a week he had a quinsy, as wur nigh bein' th' eend o' him. An' she nivver forgive him. She said as he wur an impident chap as thowt hissen too good fur his betters."

Murdoch expressed his sympathy promptly.

"I wish tha'd coom up an' talk to her some day thysen," said Janey. "It ud rest us a bit," candidly. "Yo'n getten th' kind o' voice to mak' folk hear, though yo' dunnot speak so loud, an' if yo' get close up to her ear an' say things slow, yo'd get used to it i' toime."

"I'll come some day," answered Murdoch, speculating with some doubt as to the possible result of the visit.

Her mind relieved, Janey rose to take her departure. Suddenly, however, a new idea presented itself to her active mind.

"Has tha seen Miss Ffrench yet?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"What does tha think on her?"

He picked up his book and re-opened it.

"I only saw her for an instant," he said. "I hadn't time to think anything."

On his way from his work a few days later, he stopped at the Briarley cottage. It was swept and garnished; there were no traces of the children about. Before he reached the house, there had been borne to him the sound of a voice reading at its highest and shrillest pitch, and he had recognized it as Janey's.

As he entered, that young person rose panting from her seat, in her eagerness almost dropping the graphically illustrated paper she held in her hand.

"Eh!" she exclaimed. "I am glad to see thee! I could na ha' stood it mich longer. She would ha' me read the 'To-be-continyerd' one, an' I've bin at it nigh an hour."

Granny Dixon turned on her sharply.

"What art tha stoppin' fur?" she demanded. "What's th' matter wi' thee?"

Murdoch gave a slight start. The sound was so tremendous that it seemed almost impossible that it should proceed from the small and shriveled figure in the armchair.

"What art tha stoppin' fur?" she repeated. "Get on wi' thee."

Janey drew near and spoke in her ear.

"It's Mester Murdoch," she proclaimed; "him as I towd yo' on."

The little bent figure turned slowly and Murdoch felt himself transfixed by the gaze of a pair of large keen eyes. They had been handsome eyes half a century before, and the wrinkled and seamed face had had its comeliness too.

"Tha said he wur a workin' mon," she cried, after a pause. "What did tha tell me that theer fur?"

"He is a workin' mon," said Janey. "He's getten his work-cloas on now. Does na tha see 'em?"

"Cloas!" announced the Voice again. "Cloas i'deed! A mon is na made out o' cloas. I've seed workin' men afore i' my day, an' I know 'em."

Then she extended her hand, crooking the forefinger like a claw, in a beckoning gesture.

"Coom tha here," she commanded, "an set thysen down to talk to me."

She gave the order in the manner of a female potentate, and Murdoch obeyed her with a sense of overpowering fascination.

"Wheer art tha fro'?" she demanded.

He made his reply, "From America," as distinct as possible, and was relieved to find that it reached her at once.

"'Merica?" she repeated. "I've heerd o' 'Merica often enow. That's wheer th' blacks live, an' th' Indians. I knowed a young chap as went theer, an' th' Indians scalped him. He went theer because I would na ha' him. It wur when I wur a lass."

She paused a moment and then said the last words over again, nodding her head with a touch of grim satisfaction.

"He went theer because I would na ha' him. It wur when I wur a lass."

He was watching her so intently that he was quite startled a second time when she turned her eyes upon him and spoke again, still nodding.

"I wur a han'some lass," she said. "I wur a han'some lass—seventy year' ago."

It was quite plain that she had been. The thing which was least pleasant about her now was a certain dead and withered suggestion of a beauty of a not altogether sinless order.

The recollection of the fact seemed to enliven her so far that she was inspired to conducting the greater part of the conversation herself. Her voice grew louder and louder, a dull red began to show itself on her cheeks, and her eyes sparkled. She had been "a han'some lass, seventy year' ago, an' had had her day—as theer wur dead folk could tell."

"She'll go on i' that rood aw neet, if summat dunnot tak' her off it," said Janey. "She loikes to talk about that theer better than owt else."

But something did happen "to tak' her off it."

"Tha'st getten some reason i' thee," she announced. "Tha does na oppen tha mouth as if tha wanted to swally folk when tha says what tha'st getten to say. Theer's no workin' men's ways about thee—cloas or no cloas."

"That's th' way she goes on," said Janey. "She canna bide folk to look soft when they're shoutin' to her. That was one o' th' things she had agen Mester Hixon. She said he getten so red i' th' face it put her out o' patience."

"I loike a mon as is na a foo'," proclaimed Granny Dixon. But there her voice changed and grew sharp and tremulous. "Wheer's that flower?" she cried. "Who's getten it?"

Janey turned toward the door and uttered a shrill little cry of excitement.

"It's Miss Ffrench," she said. "She's—she's stondin' at th' door."

It would have been impossible to judge from her expression how long she had been there. She stood upon the threshold with a faint smile on her lips, and spoke to Janey.

"I want to see your mother," she said.

"I'll—I'll go and tell her," the child faltered. "Will yo' coom in?"

She hesitated a second and then came in. Murdoch had arisen. She did not seem to see him as she passed before him to reach the chair in which she sat down. In fact she expressed scarcely a shadow of recognition of her surroundings. But upon Granny Dixon had fallen a sudden feverish tremor.

"Who did she say yo' wur?" she cried. "I did na hear her."

The visitor turned and confronted her.

"I am Rachel Ffrench," she answered in a clear, high voice.

The dull red deepened upon the old woman's cheeks, and her eyes gained new fire.

"Yo're a good un to mak' a body hear," she said. "An' I know yo'."

Miss Ffrench made no reply. She smiled incredulously at the fire.

The old woman moved restlessly.

"Ay, but I do," she cried. "I know yo'. Yo're Ffrench fro' head to foot. Wheer did yo' get that?"

She was pointing to a flower at Miss Ffrench's throat—a white, strongly fragrant, hot-house flower. Miss Ffrench cast a downward glance at it.

"There are plenty to be had," she said. "I got it from home."

"I've seen 'em before," said Granny Dixon. "He used to wear 'em i' his button-hole."

Miss Ffrench made no reply and she went on, her tones increasing in volume with her excitement.

"I'm talkin' o' Will Ffrench," she said. "He wur thy gran'feyther. He wur dead afore yo' wur born."

Miss Ffrench seemed scarcely interested, but Granny Dixon had not finished.

"He wur a bad un!" she cried. "He wur a devil! He wur a devil out an' out. I knowed him an' he knowed me."

Then she bent forward and touched Miss Ffrench's arm.

"Theer wur na a worse un nor a bigger devil nowheer," she said. "An' yo're th' very moral on him."

"YO'RE TH' VERY MORAL ON HIM."

Miss Ffrench got up and turned toward the door to speak to Mrs. Briarley, who that moment arrived in great haste carrying the baby, out of breath, and stumbling in her tremor at receiving gentle folk company.

"Your visitor has been talking to me," she remarked, her little smile showing itself again. "She says my grandfather was a devil."

She answered all Mrs. Briarley's terrified apologies with the same little smile. She had been passing by and had remembered that the housekeeper needed assistance in some matter and it had occurred to her to come in. That was all, and having explained herself, she went away as she had come.

"Eh!" fretted Mrs. Briarley, "to think o' that theer owd besom talkin' i' that rood to a lady. That's allus th' way wi' her. She'd mak' trouble anywheer. She made trouble enow when she wur young. She wur na no better than she should be then, an' she's nowt so mich better now."

"What's that tha'rt saying?" demanded the Voice. "A noice way that wur fur a lady to go out wi'out so mich as sayin' good-day to a body. She's as loike him as two peas—an' he wur a devil. Here," to Murdoch, "pick up that theer flower she's dropped."

Murdoch turned to the place she pointed out. The white flower lay upon the flagged floor. He picked it up and handed it to her with a vague recognition of the powerfulness of its fragrance. She took it and sat mumbling over it.

"It's th' very same," she muttered. "He used to wear 'em i' his button-hole when he coom. An' she's th' very moral on him."

CHAPTER XIII. MR. FFRENCH VISITS THE WORKS.

There were few men in Broxton or the country surrounding it who were better known than Gerard Ffrench. In the first place, he belonged, as it were, to Broxton, and his family for several generations back had belonged to it. His great-grandfather had come to the place a rich man and had built a huge house outside the village, and as the village had become a town the Ffrenchs had held their heads high. They had confined themselves to Broxton until Gerard Ffrench took his place. They had spent their lives there and their money. Those who lived to remember the youth and manhood of the present Ffrench's father had, like Granny Dixon, their stories to tell. His son, however, was a man of a different mold. There were no evil stories of him. He was a well-bred and agreeable person and lived a refined life. But he was a man with tastes which scarcely belonged to his degree.

"I ought to have been born in the lower classes and have had my way to make," he had been heard to say.

Unfortunately, however, he had been born a gentleman of leisure and educated as one. But this did not prevent him from indulging in his proclivities. He had made more than one wild business venture which had electrified his neighbors. Once he had been on the verge of a great success and again he had overstepped the verge of a great loss. He had lost money, but he had never lost confidence in his business ability.

"I have gained experience," he said. "I shall know better next time."

His wife had died early and his daughter had spent her girlhood with a relative abroad. She had developed into beauty so faultless that it had been said that its order belonged rather to the world of pedestals and catalogues than to ordinary young womanhood.

But the truth was that she was not an ordinary young woman at all.

"I suppose," she said at dinner on the evening of her visit to the Briarley cottage,—"I suppose these work-people are very radical in their views."

"Why?" asked her father.

"I went into a cottage this afternoon and found a young workman there in his working clothes, and instead of leaving the room he remained in it as if that was the most natural thing to do. It struck me that he must belong to the class of people we read of."

"I don't know much of the political state of affairs now," said Mr. Ffrench. "Some of these fellows are always bad enough, and this Haworth rose from the ranks. He was a foundry lad himself."

"I met Mr. Haworth, too," said Miss Ffrench. "He stopped in the street to stand looking after the carriage. He is a very big person."

"He is a very successful fellow," with something like a sigh. "A man who has made of himself what he has through sheer power of will and business capacity is a genius."

"What has he made of himself?" inquired Miss Ffrench.

"Well," replied her father, "the man is actually a millionaire. He is at the head of his branch of the trade; he leads the other manufacturers; he is a kind of king in the place. People may ignore him if they choose. He does not care, and there is no reason why he should."

Mr. Ffrench became rather excited. He flushed and spoke uneasily.

"There are plenty of gentlemen," he said. "We have gentlemen enough and to spare, but we have few men who can make a path through the world for themselves as he has done. For my part, I admire the man. He has the kind of force which moves me to admiration."

"I dare say," said Miss Ffrench, slowly, "that you would have admired the young workman I saw. It struck me at the time that you would."

"By the bye," her father asked with a new interest, "what kind of a young fellow was he? Perhaps it was the young fellow who is half American and——"

"He did not look like an Englishman," she interrupted. "He was too dark and tall and unconscious of himself, in spite of his awkwardness. He did not know that he was out of place."

"I have no doubt it was this Murdoch. He is a peculiar fellow, and I am as much interested in him as in Haworth. His father was a Lancashire man,—a half-crazy inventor who died leaving an unfinished model which was to have made his fortune. I have heard a great deal of the son. I wish I had seen him."

Rachel Ffrench made no reply. She had heard this kind of thing before. There had been a young man from Cumberland who had been on the point of inventing a new propelling power, but had, somehow or other, not done it; there had been a machinist from Manchester who had created an entirely new order of loom—which had not worked; and there had been half a dozen smaller lights whose inventions, though less involved, would still have made fortunes—if they had been quite practical. But Mr. Ffrench had mounted his hobby, which always stood saddled and bridled. He talked of Haworth and Haworth's success, the Works and their machinery. He calculated the expenses and the returns of the business. He even took out his tablets to get at the profits more accurately, and got down the possible cost of various improvements which had suggested themselves.

"He has done so much," he said, "that it would be easy for him to do more. He could accomplish anything if he were a better educated man—or had an educated man as partner. They say," he remarked afterward, "that this Murdoch is not an ignoramus by any means. I hear that he has a positive passion for books and that he has made several quite remarkable improvements and additions to the machinery at the Works. It would be an odd thing," biting the end of his pencil with a thoughtful air, "it would be a dramatic sort of thing if he should make a success of the idea the poor fellow, his father, left incomplete."

Indeed Miss Ffrench was quite prepared for his after-statement that he intended to pay a visit to the Works and their owner the next morning, though she could not altogether account for the slight hint of secret embarrassment which she fancied displayed itself when he made the announcement.

"It's true the man is rough and high-handed enough," he said. "He has not been too civil in his behavior to me in times gone by, but I should like to know more of him in spite of it. He is worth cultivating."

He appeared at the Works the following morning, awakening thereby some interest among the shrewder spirits who knew him of old.

"What's he up to now?" they said to each other. "He's getten some crank i' his yed or he would na be here."

Not being at any time specially shrewd in the study of human nature, it must be confessed that Mr. Ffrench was not prepared for the reception he met with in the owner's room. In his previous rare interviews with Jem Haworth he had been accorded but slight respect. His advances had been met in a manner savoring of rough contempt, his ephemeral hobbies disposed of with the amiable candor of the practical and not too polished mind; he knew he had been jeered at openly at times, and now the man who had regarded him lightly and as if he felt that he held the upper hand, received him almost with a confused, self-conscious air. He even flushed when he got up and awkwardly shook hands. "Perhaps," said his visitor to himself, "events have taught him to feel the lack in himself after all."

"I looked forward, before my return, to calling upon you," he said aloud. "And I am glad to have the opportunity at last."

Haworth reseated himself after giving him a chair, and answered with a nod and a somewhat incoherent welcome.

Ffrench settled himself with an agreeable consciousness of being less at a loss before the man than he had ever been in his life.

"What I have seen abroad," he said, "has added to the interest I have always felt in our own manufactures. You know that is a thing I have always cared for most. People have called it my hobby, though I don't think that is quite the right name for it. You have done a great deal since I went away."

"I shall do more yet," said Haworth with effort, "before I've done with the thing."

"You've done a good deal for Broxton. The place has grown wonderfully. Those cottages of yours are good work."

Haworth warmed up. His hand fell upon the table before him heavily.

"It's not Broxton I'm aimin' at," he said. "Broxton's naught to me. I'll have good work or none. It's this place here I'm at work on. I've said I'd set 'Haworth's' above 'em all, and I'll do it."

"You've done it already," answered Ffrench.

"Ay, but I tell you I'll set it higher yet. I've got the money and I've got the will. There's none on 'em can back down Jem Haworth."

"No," said Ffrench, suddenly and unaccountably conscious of a weakness in himself and his position. He did not quite understand the man. His heat was a little confusing.

"This," he decided mentally, "is his hobby."

He sat and listened with real excitement as Haworth launched out more freely and with a stronger touch of braggadocio.

He had set out in his own line and he meant to follow it in spite of all the gentlemen manufacturers in England. He had asked help from none of them, and they had given him none. He'd brought up the trade and he'd made money. There wasn't a bigger place in the country than "Haworth's," nor a place that did the work it did. He'd have naught cheap and he'd have no fancy prices. The chaps that worked for him knew their business and knew they'd lose naught by sticking to it. They knew, too, they'd got a master who looked sharp after 'em and stood no cheek nor no slack dodges.

"I've got the best lot in the trade under me," he said. "I've got a young chap in the engine-room as knows more about machinery than half the top-sawyers in England. By George! I wish I knew as much. He's a quiet chap and he's young; but if he knew how to look a bit sharper after himself, he'd make his fortune. The trouble is he's too quiet and a bit too much of a gentleman without knowing it. By George! he is a gentleman, if he is naught but Jem Haworth's engineer."

"He is proud of the fellow," thought Ffrench. "Proud of him, because he is a gentleman."

"He knows what's worth knowing," Haworth went on. "And he keeps it to himself till the time comes to use it. He's a chap that keeps his mouth shut. He comes up to my house and reads my books. I've not been brought up to books myself, but there's none of 'em he can't tackle. He's welcome to use aught I've got. I'm not such a fool as to grudge him what all my brass won't buy me."

"I think I've heard of him," said Ffrench. "You mean Murdoch."

"Ay," Haworth answered, "I mean Murdoch; and there's not many chaps like him. He's the only one of the sort I ever run up against."

"I should like to see him," said Ffrench. "My daughter saw him yesterday in one of the workmen's cottages and," with a faint smile, "he struck her as having rather the air of a radical. It was one of her feminine fancies."

There was a moment's halt and then Haworth made his reply as forcibly as ever.

"Radical be hanged," he said. "He's got work o' his own to attend to. He's one of the kind as leaves th' radicals alone. He's a straightforward chap that cares more for his books than aught else. I won't say," a trifle grudgingly, "that he's not a bit too straight in some things."

There was a halt again here which Ffrench rather wondered at; then Haworth spoke again, bluntly and yet lagging a little.

"I—I saw her, Miss Ffrench, myself yesterday. I was walking down the street when her carriage passed."

Ffrench looked at him with an inward start. It was his turn to flush now.

"I think," he said, "that she mentioned it to me."

He appeared a trifle pre-occupied for some minutes afterward, and when he roused himself laughed and spoke nervously. The color did not die out of his face during the remainder of his visit; even after he had made the tour of the Works and looked at the machinery and given a good deal of information concerning the manner in which things were done on the Continent, it was still there and perhaps it deepened slightly as he spoke his parting words.

"Then," he said, "I—we shall have the pleasure of seeing you at dinner to-morrow evening?"

"Yes," Haworth answered, "I'll be there."

CHAPTER XIV. NEARLY AN ACCIDENT.

It was Rachel Ffrench who received her father's guest the following evening. Mr. Ffrench had been delayed in his return from town and was still in his dressing-room. Accordingly when Haworth was announced, the doors of the drawing-room being flung open revealed to him the figure of his host's daughter alone.

The room was long and stately, and after she had risen from her seat it took Miss Ffrench some little time to make her way from one end to the other. Haworth had unconsciously halted after crossing the threshold, and it was not until she was half-way down the room that he bestirred himself to advance to meet her. He did not know why he had paused at first, and his sudden knowledge that he had done so roused him to a momentary savage anger.

"Dang it!" he said to himself. "Why did I stand there like a fool?"

The reason could not be explained briefly. His own house was a far more splendid affair than Ffrench's, and among his visitors from London and Manchester there were costumes far more gorgeous than that of Miss Ffrench. He was used to the flash of jewels and the gloss of brilliant colors. Miss Ffrench wore no ornaments at all, and her dark purple dress was simple and close-clinging.

A couple of paces from him she stopped and held out her hand.

"My father will be glad to see you," she said. "He was, unfortunately, detained this evening by business. He will be down stairs in a few moments."

His sense of being at a disadvantage when, after she had led him back to the fire, they were seated, was overwhelming. A great heat rushed over him; the hush of the room, broken only by the light ticking of the clock, was misery. His eye traveled stealthily from the hem of her dark purple gown to the crowning waves of her fair hair, but he had not a word to utter. It made him feel almost brutal.

"But the day'll come yet," he protested inwardly, feeling his weakness as he thought it, "when I'll hold my own. I've done it before, and I'll do it again."

Miss Ffrench regarded him with a clear and direct gaze. She did not look away from him at all; she was not in the least embarrassed, and though she did not smile, the calmness of her face was quite as perfect in expression.

"My father told me of his visit to your place," she said. "He interested me very much. I should like to see the Works, if you admit visitors. I know nothing of such things."

"Any time you choose to come," he answered, "I'll show you round—and be glad to do it. It's a pretty big place of the kind."

He was glad she had chosen this subject. If she would only go on, it would not be so bad. He would be in his own groove. And she did go on.

"I've seen very little of Broxton," she proceeded. "I spent a few weeks here before going abroad again with my father, and I cannot say I have been very fond of it. I do not like England, and on the Continent one hears unpleasant things of English manufacturing towns. I think," smiling a little for the first time, "that one always associates them with 'strikes' and squalid people."

"There is not much danger of strikes here," he replied. "I give my chaps fair play and let 'em know who's master."

"But they have radical clubs," she said, "and talk politics and get angry when they are not sober. I've heard that much already."

"They don't talk 'em in my place," he answered, dogmatically.

He was not quite sure whether it relieved him or not when Ffrench entered at this moment and interrupted them. He was more at his ease with Ffrench, and yet he felt himself at a disadvantage still. He scarcely knew how the night passed. A feverish unrest was upon him. Sometimes he hardly heard what his entertainer said, and Mr. Ffrench was in one of his most voluble and diffuse moods. He displayed his knowledge of trade and mechanics with gentlemanly ostentation; he talked of "Trades' Unions" and the master's difficulties; he introduced manufacturer's politics and expatiated on Continental weaknesses. He weighed the question of demand and supply and touched on "protective tariff."

"Blast him," said Haworth, growing bitter mentally, "he thinks I'm up to naught else, and he's right."

As her father talked Miss Ffrench joined in but seldom. She listened and looked on in a manner of which Haworth was conscious from first to last. The thought made its way into his mind, finally, that she looked on as if these matters did not touch her at all and she was only faintly curious about them. Her eyes rested on him with a secret air of watchful interest; he met them more than once as he looked up and she did not turn them away. He sat through it all, full of vengeful resentment, and was at once wretched and happy, in spite of it and himself.

When, at her father's request, she played and sang, he sat apart moody and yet full of clumsy rapture. He knew nothing of the music, but his passion found a tongue in it, nevertheless. If she had played badly he would have taken the lack of harmony for granted, but as she played well he experienced a pleasure, while he did not comprehend.

When it was all over and he found himself out alone in the road in the dark, he was feverish still.

"I don't seem to have made naught at th' first sight," he said. Then he added with dogged exultation, "But I don't look for smooth sailing. I know enough for that. I've seen her and been nigh her, and that's worth setting down—with a chap like me."

At the end of the week a carriage drove up to the gate-way of the Works, and Mr. Ffrench and his daughter descended from it. Mr. Ffrench was in the best of humors; he was in his element as he expatiated upon the size and appointments of the place. He had been expatiating upon them during the whole of the drive.

On their being joined by Haworth himself, Miss Ffrench decided inwardly that here upon his own domain he was not so wholly objectionable as she had fancied at first—even that he was deserving of a certain degree of approval. Despite the signs of elated excitement, her quick eye detected at once that he was more at his ease. His big frame did not look out of place; he moved as if he was at home, and upon the whole his rough air of authority and the promptness with which his commands were obeyed did not displease her.

"He is master," she said to herself.

She was fond of power and liked the evidence of it in others. She did not object to the looks the men, who were at work, cast upon her as she went from one department to another. Her beauty had never yet failed to command masculine homage from all ranks. The great black fellows at the furnaces exchanged comments as she passed. They would have paused in their work to look at her if they had dared. The object of their admiration bore it calmly; it neither confounded nor touched her; it did not move her at all.

Mr. Ffrench commented, examined and explained with delightful eloquence.

"We are fortunate in timing our visit so well," he said to his daughter. "They are filling an immense order for the most important railroad in the country. On my honor, I would rather be at the head of such a gigantic establishment than sit on the throne of England! But where is this protégé of yours?" he said to Haworth at last. "I should like above all things to see him."

"Murdoch?" answered Haworth. "Oh, we're coming to him after a bit. He's in among the engines."

When they reached the engine-rooms Haworth presented him with little ceremony, and explained the purpose of their visit. They wanted to see the engines and he was the man to make the most of them.

Mr. Ffrench's interest was awakened readily. The mechanic from Cumberland had been a pretentious ignoramus; the young man from Manchester had dropped his aspirates and worn loud plaids and flaming neck-ties, but this was a less objectionable form of genius.

Mr. Ffrench began to ask questions and make himself agreeable, and in a short time was very well entertained indeed.

Miss Ffrench listened with but slight demonstrations of interest. She did not understand the conversation which was being carried on between her father and Murdoch, and she made no pretense of doing so.

"It is all very clear to them" she said to Haworth as they stood near each other.

"It's all clear enough to him," said Haworth, signifying Murdoch with a gesture.

Upon which Miss Ffrench smiled a little. She was not sensitive upon the subject of her father's hobbies, and the coarse frankness of the remark amused her.

But notwithstanding her lack of interest she drew nearer to the engine finally and stood looking at it, feeling at once fascinated and unpleasantly overpowered by its heavy, invariable motion.

It was as she stood in this way a little later that Murdoch's glance fell upon her. The next instant, with the simultaneous cry of terror which broke from the others, he had thrown himself forward and dragged her back by main force, and among the thunderous wheels and rods and shafts there was slowly twisted and torn and ground into shreds a fragment of the delicate fabric of her dress. It was scarcely the work of a second. Her father staggered toward them white and trembling.

"Good God!" he cried. "Good God! What——" the words died upon his bloodless lips.

She freed herself from Murdoch's grasp and stood upright. She did not look at him at all, she looked at her father and lightly brushed with her hand her sleeve at the wrist. Despite her pallor it was difficult to realize that she only held herself erect by a terrible effort of self-control.

"Why"—she said—"why did he touch me—in that manner?"

Haworth uttered a smothered oath; Murdoch turned about and strode out of the room. He did not care to remain to hear the explanation.

As he went out into the open air a fellow-workman, passing by, stopped to stare at him.

"What's up wi' thee?" he asked. "Has tha been punsin Haworth o'er again?" The incident referred to being always remembered as a savory and delectable piece of humor.

Murdoch turned to him with a dazed look.

"I—" he stammered. "We—have very nearly had an accident." And went on his way without further explanation.

CHAPTER XV. "IT WOULD BE A GOOD THING."

Exciting events were not so common in Broxton and its vicinity that this one could remain in the background. It furnished a topic of conversation for the dinner and tea-tables of every family within ten miles of the place. On Murdoch's next visit to the Briarleys', Granny Dixon insisted on having the matter explained for the fortieth time and was manifestly disgusted by the lack of dramatic incident connected with it.

"Tha seed her dress catch i' th' wheel an' dragged her back," she shouted. "Was na theer nowt else? Did na she swound away, nor nothin'?"

"No," he answered. "She did not know what had happened at first."

Granny Dixon gave him a shrewd glance of examination, and then favored him with a confidential remark, presented at the top of her voice.

"I conna bide her," she said.

"What did Mr. Ffrench say to thee?" asked Janey. "Does tha think he'll gie thee owt fur it?"

"No," answered Murdoch. "He won't do that."

"He owt to," said Janey fretfully. "An' tha owt to tak' it, if he does. Tha does na think enow o' money an' th' loike. Yo'll nivver get on i' th' world if yo' mak' light o' money an' let it slip by yo'."

Floxham had told the story somewhat surlily to his friends, and his friends had retailed it over their beer, and the particulars had thus become common property.

"What did she say?" Floxham had remarked at the first relation. "She said nowt, that's what she said. She did na quoite mak' th' thing out at first, an' she stood theer brushin' th' black off her sleeve. Happen," sardonically, "she did na loike th' notion o' a working chap catchin' howd on her wi'out apologizin'."

Haworth asked Murdoch to spend an evening with him, and sat moody and silent through the greater part of it. At last he said:

"You think you've been devilish badly treated," he said. "But, by the Lord! I wish I was in your place."

"You wish," repeated Murdoch, "that you were in my place? I don't know that it's a particularly pleasant place to be in."

Haworth leaned forward upon the table and stared across at him gloomily.

"Look here," he said. "You know naught about her. She's hard to get at; but she'll remember what's happened; cool as she took it, she'll remember it."

"I don't want her to remember it," returned Murdoch. "Why should it matter? It's a thing of yesterday. It was nothing but chance. Let it go."

"Confound it!" said Haworth, with a restive moroseness. "I tell you I wish I'd been in your place—at twice the risk."

The same day Mr. Ffrench had made a visit to the Works for the purpose of setting his mind at rest and expressing his gratitude in a graceful manner. In fact he was rather glad of the opportunity to present himself upon the ground so soon again. But on confronting the hero of the hour, he found that somehow the affair dwindled and assumed an altogether incidental and unheroic aspect. His rather high-flown phrases modified themselves and took a different tone.

"He is either very reserved or very shy," he said afterward to his daughter. "It is not easy to reach him at the outset. There seems a lack of enthusiasm about him, so to speak."

"Will he come to the house?" asked Miss Ffrench.

"Oh yes. I suppose he will come, but it was very plain that he would rather have stayed away. He had too much good taste to refuse point-blank to let you speak to him."

"Good taste!" repeated Miss Ffrench.

Her father turned upon her with manifest irritation.

"Good taste!" he repeated petulantly. "Cannot you see that the poor fellow is a gentleman? I wish you would show less of this nonsensical caste prejudice, Rachel."

"I suppose one necessarily dispenses with a good deal of it in a place like this," she answered. "In making friends with Mr. Haworth, for instance——"

Mr. Ffrench drew nearer to her and rested his elbow upon the mantel with rather an embarrassed expression.

"I wish you to—to behave well to Haworth," he said faltering. "I—a great deal may—may depend upon it."

She looked up at him at once, lifting her eyes in a serene glance.

"Do you want to go into the iron trade?" she asked relentlessly.

He blushed scarlet, but she did not move her eyes from his face on that account.

"What—what Haworth needs," he stammered, "is a—a man of education to—to assist him. A man who had studied the scientific features of—of things, might suggest valuable ideas to him. There is an—an immense field open to a rich, enterprising fellow such as he is—a man who is fearless and—and who has the means to carry out his ventures."

"You mean a man who will try to do new things," she remarked. "Do you think he would?"

"The trouble has been," floundering more hopelessly than ever, "that his lack of cultivation has—well, has forced him to act in a single groove. If—if he had a—a partner who—knew the ropes, so to speak—his business would be doubled—trebled."

She repeated aloud one of his words.

"A partner," she said.

He ran his hand through his hair and stared at her, wishing that he could think of something decided to say.