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ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

——o——

SOWERS NOT REAPERS.

CINNAMON AND PEARLS.

A TALE OF THE TYNE.

——o——

IN NINE VOLUMES.

VOL. VII.

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

MDCCCXXXIV.

LONDON:

Printed by William Clowes,

Duke-street, Lambeth.

CONTENTS.

SOWERS NOT REAPERS.

A Tale.

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1833.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

From the moment of beginning my work, one of my most anxious endeavours has been to keep myself out of the sight of my readers;—not from any affectation of reserve, but because, in this case, there is no necessary connexion between the author of the work and the matter discussed in it. Occasions have arisen, however, to induce me to speak in the first person, in a preface; and I now do so again on account of certain questions which have been publicly as well as privately treated, respecting the proper direction of the popular influence which is attributed to me, and which it would be equally weak and hypocritical in me to disclaim.

What I wish to explain is,—briefly,—that I take my stand upon Science. Whether the truths attempted to be illustrated by me on this ground be Tory, Whig, or Radical, is a question to be determined, if they so please, by Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, and not (at least at present) by me. It comes within the scope of my object to illustrate certain principles of Social Morals, as well as of Political Economy; but it is altogether foreign to my purpose to determine by what political party those principles are the most satisfactorily recognized. I may have,—I have,—a decided opinion on this point; but, as it has nothing to do with my work, I must protest against all attempts on the part of those who speak of me as an author to render me distrusted by any one political party, or to identify me with any other.

All have their mission. It is the mission of some to lead or support a party;—a mission as honourable as it is necessary. It is the mission of others to ascertain or to teach truth which bears no relation to party; and to fulfil it requires the free use of materials and facilities afforded by any in whose possession they may happen to be. This last is my office,—imposed on me by the very act of accepting my first services. Its discharge requires perfect liberty of action and of speech;—freedom alike from anger at the vituperation and ridicule of one party,—from distrust of the courtesies of a second,—and from subservience to the dictation of a third. Such freedom I enjoy, and am resolved to maintain. The sciences on which I touch, whether in the one series or the other on which I am occupied, bear no relation to party. The People, for whom I write, are of no party,—I, therefore, as a writer, am of no party. To what party I might be proved to belong by inference from the truths I illustrate, I leave to be decided by those who may think it worth their while.

If this explanation should expose me to the charge of self-importance, let it in justice be remembered that it was not I who originated the question respecting the proper direction of my influence, or invited any interference therein. No such direction is attempted by myself. As I think, so I speak; leaving what I say to find its way to the hearts and minds which have a congeniality with my own. Whenever I begin to modify the expression of what I think from a regard to one class of minds rather than another, I shall probably be thankful for assistance in determining the direction of an influence which will have lost half its vitality in losing its freedom.

Meantime, while declining all control in the use of such power as I have, I will most humbly accept aid from any quarter in the improvement of its character. With its extent and mode of operation I am and shall be satisfied, because these are not included in my responsibilities. With its quality I hope never to be satisfied; as the time ought never to arrive when it will not be inferior to my aspirations.

H. M.

SOWERS NOT REAPERS.

Chapter I.
MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT.

The nights of a certain summer of the present century would scarcely have been known for nights by those sober people who shut themselves in as it grows dark, and look out in the morning, perceiving only that the sun is come again. During the nights we speak of, repose did not descend with the twilight upon the black moors of Yorkshire, and the moon looked down upon something more glittering than the reflection of her own face in the tarns of Ingleborough, or in the reaches of the Wharf and the Don. Some of the polished and sharpened ware of Sheffield was exposed to the night dews in the fields, and passed from the hands of those who tempered to the possession of those who were to wield it.

Others were also abroad, with the view of relieving their hardships instead of seeking to avenge them. The dwellers on high grounds were so far worse off than the inhabitants of the valleys, that they could not quench their thirst, and lose in sleep their weariness and their apprehensions of hunger. During the day, there was drought within, and the images of drought without;—hay dried before it was mown; cattle with their tongues hanging out, panting in the parched meadows; horses lashing madly at the clouds of flies that descended upon them as they stooped to the slimy pools which had still some moisture in them; wells with cracked buckets and dangling ropes; and ditches where there was an equally small probability that children would find weeds and be drowned in the search. During the night, when some of these spectacles were hidden, it was necessary to take the chance of preventing a repetition of them on the following day; and those who had cattle growing lean, children growing fretful, and no remaining patience with a dry well, bore with the weariness of night-watching in the hope of relieving the more urgent evil of thirst.

On the night when the midsummer full moon gradually emerged from the partial eclipse caused by the smokes of Sheffield, and shone full on the hill-sides to the west, two women were sitting near a spring which had rarely, till lately, failed to bless the stony region in which it was wont to flow. They came to watch for any gush or drip which might betoken the fall of showers somewhere among the hills; and patient would their watch have appeared to an observer. The one sat on the stone fence which separated the road from a field of drooping oats, and never moved, except to cast a frightened look around her when an unseasonable bleat proceeded from the restless ewes on the moor, or the distant foundry clock was heard to strike. Her companion sat, also in silence, on the edge of the dry cistern where her pitcher rested, and kept her eyes fixed on the fitful lights of the foundry from whose neighbourhood she had come.

“I have been thinking, Mary,” said Mrs. Kay, leaving her seat on the wall, and speaking in a low voice to her sister-in-law,—“I have been thinking that my husband may, perhaps, come round for us when his hours are up at the foundry, instead of going straight home. I wish he may; for I declare I don’t like being out in this way, all by ourselves.”

Mary made no answer.

“It is all so still and unnatural here. There’s the foundry at work, to be sure; but to see the tilting-mill standing, all black and quiet, is what I never met with before. We may see it for some time to come, though; for there seems little chance of a sufficient fall to touch the wheel at present. Do you think there is, Mary?”

Mary shook her head; and Mrs. Kay, having examined the spring with eye and ear, stole back to her former seat.

After looking into the field behind her for some time, she came again to say,—

“My husband talks about the crops, and the harvest being at hand, and so on; but I do not see what sort of a harvest it is to be, unless we have rain directly. What a poor-looking oat-field that is behind the wall! and there are none any better on these high grounds, as far as I can see.”

“There would be some chance for the low grounds, if the springs would flow,” answered Mary.

“Why, yes. My husband was telling me that there is a corner left of one of Anderson’s meadows down below, where the grass is as fresh and sweet as if there had been forty-eight hours’ rain. It was but a corner; but there was one of the little Andersons, and his sister, raking up the grass after the mower, and piling their garden barrow with it, to give to their white pony. Even Anderson’s beasts have been foddered, as if it was winter, for this fortnight past.”

Mary nodded, and her sister proceeded.

“I wonder how many more improvements of Anderson’s we shall see after this next bad harvest; for bad it must be now. It seems to me that the less his land yields, the more he lays out upon it.”

“The less it yields, the more he wants, I suppose.”

“Yes; but it is an accident its yielding so ill for three years together; and where he gets the money, I don’t know, except that bread has been dear enough of late to pay for any thing.”

“That’s it, to be sure,” said Mary.

“Dear enough for any thing,” repeated Mrs. Kay. “When I used to have my fill of meat every day, I little thought that the bread I ate with it would grow scarce among us. No rise of wages, such as the masters make such a complaint of, can stand against it.”

Mary shook her head, and there was a long pause.

“I’ll tell you what, Mary,” resumed the chief speaker, after a time, “there would be much more pleasure in talking with you, if you would talk a little yourself. It sets one down so not to know whether you are listening to what one says.”

“I always listen when I am spoken to,” replied Mary; “but people are not all made talkers alike.”

“Why, no, that they certainly are not. My husband laughs, and says that a pretty dull time you and Chatham must have of it, when you are out walking on Sundays. You will both get all you want to say in a week said in five minutes. Well, I don’t wonder at your not answering that; but you will not be offended at a joke from your own brother; and you know he does not think the worse of Chatham for keeping his thoughts to himself, and——Mercy! what did I see over yonder!”

And in her hurry Mrs. Kay pushed the pitcher, which Mary caught before it went rattling down among the stones. She sat very quietly, watching the motions of a number of men who were crossing a gate from one field to another at some distance, and who seemed to be making for the road.

“Mary! Mary! what shall we do if they come here?” asked the trembling Mrs. Kay.

Mary rose and took up her pitcher, observing that they might sit safe enough in the shadow of Warden’s mill, just to the left; and then they might have another chance for the spring as they came by in their way home. Mrs. Kay could scarcely be persuaded that going home would be perfectly safe as soon as it was daylight, and that the men who had evidently been out at drill would be dispersed by dawn.

The women crept along, under the shadow of the wall, and then quickly crossed the broad strip of moonlight which lay between them and the mill. Before they reached the steps, which happened to be on the shadowy side, Mrs. Kay was nearly unable to walk, and her terrors were not lessened by the apparition of a person standing on the first stage, and looking down on them from the top of the long flight of steps.

“Sit still,” said Mary, beginning to ascend, till she saw that Warden, the miller, was coming down to inquire their business. She then briefly explained what brought them upon his property.

“So you are looking for water,” he replied, “and I am looking for wind. For three weeks there has not been a breath, and not a steady breeze since long before that. The bakers are calling out upon us so as to keep us out of our beds, watching for any rack in the sky that may betoken a coming wind.”

“And have you ever seen, sir, such a sight as sent us here?” inquired the trembling Mrs. Kay. “Such[“Such] a sight as there is in the fields there?”

“What, the nightly drill? O yes, many a night, though they may not be aware who has been overlooking them. They have never come near enough on light nights for me to pick them out by their faces, so that there is no occasion for me to take any notice; but I mark how they get on in shouldering their pikes and learning to obey orders. Here, as I stand by the fan-wheel, I hear the word of command quite plain through the still air; and once they came upon this very slope. It was too dark a night for them to see me; but I heard them stumble against the very steps you are sitting on, Mrs. Kay.”

“How long do you suppose it is to last, Mr. Warden?”

“Till prices fall, or the people have burned a mill or two, perhaps. ’Tis a happy thing for you and yours, Mrs. Kay, that Oliver’s foundry does not come under the ban. There it blazes away, night and day, and I hear no curses upon it, like what are visited upon the mills. It is well for you and yours that Kay has to ladle molten metal instead of having to manage machinery. I hope he is well, Mrs. Kay?”

Mrs. Kay did not answer, and was found to be in no condition for dialogue. Fear and fatigue had overpowered her, and she could only lean, faint and sobbing, against the rail.

“She is not strong,” observed Mary. “Do you happen to have any thing in the mill to revive her? My pitcher is empty.”

Warden fanned her with his hat, having no other means of refreshment in his power; and he carried on the conversation with Mary while doing so, that the poor woman might have time to recover herself. It was not merely machinery that was the object of the trained bands, he observed. In many parts they had pulled down corn stores; and it was rumoured that Kirkland’s granaries were threatened by the very people who were now near them. If they really entertained the idea that it was a public injury to have a stock of corn laid by while the price was high, it was no wonder that they were angry with Kirkland, as well as with some people that had much more credit, without having done and suffered so much to get it. He should like to know what the country was to do without such men as Kirkland, when there had been three bad harvests following one another?

“Your mill would stand idle if there was not corn brought from here or there,” observed Mary. “But are those people that we saw bound for Kirkland’s granaries? I should be sorry to think that they were about any mischief.”

“They could be about little but mischief at this time of night, and with arms too; but it is full late, I fancy, to be going so far. It is said my father-in-law’s threshing-machine is doomed.”

“And what does he say to that?”

“O, he swears at the people because they can’t be contented when he is. But, to my mind, it would not be so great a hardship this year as another, seeing how little corn there will be to thresh. Not that I approve such doings in any way; but when people are so badly off with the high price of provisions, and the uncertainty of peace, what can you expect?”

“You talked of noting faces; are there any of our people now in yonder fields, do you suppose?”

“Do you mean Sheffield people, or people of your village?”

“Why, either.”

“There are undoubtedly many from about Stockport, and out of Leicestershire, who go the round to stir up discontent, and teach the drill. But it is said there are a good many neighbours of ours among them too. What is more likely than that those who have not had their fill in the day should turn out at night to something that may amuse them better than lying awake, or dreaming of cheap bread? This is just what you have been doing, you see; and what Mrs. Kay had better have let alone, it seems. Come, Mrs. Kay, how are you now? Able to walk, do you think?”

Quite able now to walk, and to ask a hundred questions on the way about the cause of the terror which had shaken her, and the probable duration of the hardship which had reduced her; on neither of which matters was much satisfaction to be gained from the miller.

The spring was still dry, but Mary chose to watch till the children came to take her place in the morning. The miller took charge of Mrs. Kay till she was fairly within the light of the foundry fires, and then struck across the fields homewards, hoping that his mill would not again be the refuge of frightened women while he was on the spot.

Mary’s watch was vain, and the more wearisome from her occasional fancy that it would not prove vain. More than once she was persuaded that she heard the trickling of water while listening intently after the moon had gone down; and when she fell asleep for a few moments, her thoughts were full of the hardship of having only one pitcher to fill when the water was overflowing every place. Not the less for this did she carry home this very pitcher, swinging empty at arm’s length, when the village was up and awake, and the sun beating down hot upon the slippery turf, and glaring, reflected from the stone fences, upon the dusty road.

At the door she met a neighbour, Mrs. Skipper, the baker of the village, who supplied a use for the pitcher.

“Well, Mary Kay, and what’s the news with you?”

“Nothing particular, Mrs. Skipper. Are you come to tell us again that bread is risen?”

“Why, that I am, I’m sorry to say; and I wish you would change looks with me, Mary, and then people would not taunt me as they do, when I say that bread has risen.”

“How would that alter the matter?”

“O, they talk about my being fresh-coloured, and all that, and say it’s a sign that I live of the best, whatever I may charge to others. Just as if I made the bread dear, instead of the corn being as high to us bakers as to other people; and as if there was no assize of bread in London.”

“And as if you cared for being called handsome,” added Kay from behind, having come to breakfast in the midst of the greeting.

“I think you are handsome—very handsome,” said little John Kay, looking up earnestly into Mrs. Skipper’s bonny face. She stooped down to give him a hearty smack, and promise him a half-penny bun if he would come and see her.

“There now, master John, you well nigh made me spill my cider, boy. Here, Mary, hold your pitcher. Yes, it is for you—for all of you, I mean. You will give John a drop, I’m sure. Ah! I thought you would like it, now it is so difficult to get any thing good to drink. Do but taste it, Mr. Kay. Is not it good? It was sent me by a cousin of mine, and I thought I would bring you some, especially as I had to tell you that the bread is risen again. It is nineteen-pence now! What do you say to that, Mary?”

Mary, as usual, said nothing. She did not find that speech mended matters of this kind; and besides, it was time she was setting about her task of purifying the distasteful water which they must drink, if they meant to drink at all, till the springs should flow again. She emptied the clear, fresh-looking cider into her own pitcher, and returned Mrs. Skipper’s with a look which was less indifferent than her manner.

“What I say is,” observed Kay, “that if bread is risen, our wages must rise. We are all of one mind about that—that a man cannot live for less than will keep him alive; to say nothing of his being fresh-coloured, Mrs. Skipper. We can none of us boast much of that.”

“Well, how’s your wife, Mr. Kay? She was but poorly, I thought, when I saw her two days ago.”

“O, she is a poor thing enough. She was not much to boast of when she had an easy life compared with the present; and now she droops sadly. John can hardly call her very handsome indeed. Can you, John?”

“John, carry your mother a cup of cider, if she is awake,” said Mary; “and tell her I am home, getting breakfast.”

“There, that’s right, Mary,” said Mrs. Skipper. “You have such a way of telling giddy people what they should not say and do. I am going my ways directly, to leave you to yours. But send one of the children after me for a nice hot roll for your sister. The new bread is just coming out of the oven. And be sure you tell me whether she likes the cider, you know.”

“And if she has not an appetite for the roll, we won’t send it back, I promise you,” said Kay. “She has got into the way of not touching her breakfast, lately; and the same thing cannot be said of me, when I have been busy casting all night. Somebody will eat your roll, and thank you for it.”

“That means that I may send two; but——”

Kay protested, and Mrs. Skipper explained, and Mary announced breakfast.

“Breakfast, such as it is, Mrs. Skipper,” observed Kay. “No disrespect to your bread! But time was when I could afford it newer, and plenty of it, and a bit of something to relish it. One does not relish it so well when one can’t cut and come again, but may have just so much and no more.”

Mrs. Skipper wished he could see what she saw of poor creatures that could get none,—not the smallest and driest loaf, to try whether they could relish it. If the potato crop failed, she did not know what was to become of them; or of herself either, if they went on to look in at her shop window. She had not the heart to draw the bread, with them looking on, and not stuff a bit into the children’s mouths. And, dashing away the tears from her bright black eyes, widow Skipper hastened whence she came, hugging by the way the child who was sent to wait her pleasure about the roll.

Before sitting down to his scanty meal, Kay went to rally his wife about what she had seen and been alarmed at in her late expedition, and to advise her to cheer up, instead of giving way, as she seemed disposed now to do. She was up, but he supposed hardly awake yet; for she had not much to say, and seemed flurried, and not able to take exactly what he meant. He thought she had better have slept another hour.

Chapter II.
A HARVEST EVE.

Mary rightly believed that there was a chance for the corn on the low grounds, if rain should speedily fall. By the time that the horned sheep of the western moors had cropped the last bite of juicy grass in the dells, they were gathered together by the shepherd to abide the storms which were gathering about the summits of Wharnside and Pennygant. While they stood trembling and bleating in the rising blasts, the cattle in the vales left the muddy pools, and turned towards the shelter of the stooping and rustling trees; and many a human eye was raised to the whirling mills, whose inactivity had wearied expectation so long.

Neither the wind, nor the rain which followed, pleased every body, any more than any other wind and rain. Havoc was made by the blasts in Mr. Fergusson’s young plantations, where a thousand saplings stood, dry enough for firewood, ready to be snapped by the first visitation of a gust. Trees of loftier growth strewed the Abbey lawn, and afforded matter of lamentation to the elder members of Mr. Fergusson’s family, and of entertainment to the children, who watched for hours the operations of the woodmen in removing the fallen ornaments of the estate. Every washerwoman within some miles who happened to be pursuing her vocation that day, had to mourn the disappearance of cap or handkerchief from the line or bush; and how many kitchen chimneys smoked, no chimney doctor near would have ventured to say. Meanwhile, the millers and their men bestirred themselves cheerily, as sailors do when the breeze freshens after a long calm; and careful housewifes dislodged all unclean insects from their water tubs, and swept out their spouts in preparation for the first droppings. As might have been expected, the rain came, not in droppings, but in sheets. No woollen coat, woven or unwoven, saved the shepherd and his sheep from being drenched to the skin. Every tree became a commodious shower-bath to the horse or cow beneath it. Many an infirmity was exposed in thatch or tile which had never before been suspected; and everybody looked gloomy in Anderson’s farm, (except the ducks,) from the apprehension that the meagre crops would be laid, past recovery. On the first cessation of the storm, matters did appear sad enough: in the villages, every thing smutted, from the smoke of the furnaces being beaten down; in the country, all brown and muddy-looking till the waters had had time to retire into the ditches, and the verdure to show itself; and even then, the straggling oats and prostrate wheat presented but a small improvement on their former appearance. Landlords and tenants crossed each other’s path while taking their rounds, but could not agree as to the probabilities of the approaching harvest. Mr. Fergusson hoped that a day or two would make a great difference in the appearance of the fields; while Anderson was certain that it was too late for the crops to revive under the gentlest rain, and that they would prove to have been utterly destroyed by the flood which had swept down from the hills. Neither could establish his point till harvest came.

Then each proved to be right. On the high grounds, the produce was, in truth, scarcely worth carrying away, while in the vales there was better work for the harvest wain. Even there, however, there were more gleaners than reapers; and the artisans who came forth in the evening to see what had been done, agreed with the disappointed Irish, who must travel farther in search of harvest work, that the total crop would indeed turn out to be far below the average.

The best of the harvest fields did not present the usual images of peace and contentment.

“Out, out, out!” cried Anderson, to a troop of boys and girls who had pressed in at his heels as he entered a field whence the sheaves were not yet carried. “How many times am I to have the trouble of turning you out, I wonder? Wait, can’t ye, till the corn is carried?”

At the flourish of his stick, the intruders took flight, and jostled each other at the gate, in their hurry to get out; but they returned, one by one, keeping in his rear, like a spider watching a fly, till they could stoop down behind a shock, and filch from the sheaves at their leisure. Following the example of the children, a woman dropped in at the gate, another entered from a gap in the fence, at a moment when the farmer had his back turned, while the heads of two or three men appeared over the wall. It was plain that the tenth commandment was not in the thoughts of any present, unless in Anderson’s own.

“Here again, you rogue!” he cried, lifting up a boy by the collar from a hiding-place between two sheaves. “You are the very boy I told twice to go to the field below. There is plenty of room for you there.”

“But there is no corn there, sir.”

“Corn or no corn, there you shall go to be made an example of for pilfering from my sheaves. Here, Hoggets, take this lad down to the Lane field, and give him a good whipping in sight of them all.”

“O, no, no! Mercy, mercy!” cried the boy. “Mother said I should have no supper,—father said he would beat me, if I did not make a good gleaning. I won’t go, I tell you; I won’t. O, sir, don’t let him beat me! Ask father! I won’t go.”

Mary Kay came up to intercede. The boy was her nephew; and she could assure Mr. Anderson that John was told to go home at his peril without an apron full of corn.

“Then let his parents answer for his flogging, as they ought to do, for driving the boy to steal,” said the farmer. “I am not to be encroached upon because they choose to be harsh with their boy; and I tell you, mistress, this pilfering must be put a stop to. This very season, when the crop is scanty enough at the best, I am losing more than I ever did before by foul gleaning. Let the boy’s parents be answerable for the flogging he shall have. Hoggets, take him away.”

“Had you not better send Hoggets to flog the boy’s father and mother?” Mary inquired. “That would be more just, I think.”

“O, do, sir, do!” entreated John; “and I will show him the way.”

“I dare say you would; and this aunt of yours would find some excuse next for their not being flogged.”

“I won’t promise but I might,” said Mary; “for they may have something to say about what has driven them to covet your corn. It is not the going without one supper, but the being supperless every night. Instead of a beating, once and away, such as they promised the poor lad, it is the scourge of want, sir, for week after week, and month after month.”

“I am very sorry to hear it; and if they come and ask in a proper way, they may chance to get some help from me. But, as to countenancing my property being taken because they are poor, it would, be a sin for their boy’s sake, and for the sake of all the boys that would follow his example. So, off with him!”

Mary was far from wishing to defend the act of pilfering from sheaves, and equally far from supposing that her brother and sister thought of any such mode of fulfilling their command when it was delivered to their boy. Mr. Anderson might be perfectly sure that Kay and his wife would not come and ask, in the “proper way” he alluded to, for what they were wearing themselves out in struggling to earn; and as for the boy, she believed she could answer for him that the being deprived of what he had gathered, or, at most, a private beating, would avail to make him observe other commands in endeavouring to fulfil those of his parents. Anderson still thought differently; and, perceiving at the moment half a dozen little heads peeping from behind so many shocks, was confirmed in his opinion that the boy must be flogged. Hoggets accordingly whipped up the little lad, slung him, screaming and writhing, over his shoulder, and disappeared behind the wall, while the farmer hunted out the other culprits, and sent them, for a punishment, to see their companion flogged in the field. Mary first detained them to see her restore John’s handfulls of corn to the sheaves, and then went down to do the best she could for her poor little nephew in his agony.

She presently overtook him, and found that his agony was now of a more mixed character than she had expected. He was alternating between hope and fear. The quivering nostril and short sob told what his terror had been, while his raised eye, and efforts to compose himself, testified to his trust that he had found a deliverer. Two young ladies on horseback were talking with Hoggets, and looking compassionately on the culprit, while Hoggets touched his hat every instant, and had already lowered the boy from his disgraceful elevation. The Miss Fergussons only asked him to delay till they had overtaken Mr. Anderson, and endeavoured to procure pardon; and Hoggets thought it was not for him to resist the wishes of the ladies.

The whole matter was argued over again, and the farmer strongly urged with the plea that corn was more tempting to the poor than ever before,—the quartern being now one shilling and eight-pence. The farmer thought that the stronger the temptation, the more exemplary should be the punishment. If he could supply every bread-eater near him with abundance of corn, so as to obviate the temptation, he would gladly do so, as he held prevention to be better than punishment; but, as he had not this in his power, the best thing he could do was to discourage compliance with temptation. In this case, however, as the boy had been a good deal punished by exposure, and by being off and on in his expectations of being flogged, enough was done for example, and John might run home as fast as he liked.

“That will not be very fast,” Mary observed, “since he is to be beaten at the end of his walk for bringing his mother’s apron home empty. I have heard say, sir, by one that knows well, that our people are treated like this boy; brought low for want of food, driven to skulk and pilfer for it, and then disgraced and punished. But there is this difference, that you cannot prevent the want, and, in the case of the people, it might be prevented.”

“Chatham put that into your head, I suppose. It is just like one of his sayings. But I wish he would not make the worst of matters, as if any thing ailed the nation more than there has been ever since people herded together with mischief-makers among them here and there.”

Miss Fergusson hoped that there had not always been, and would not always be, such proceedings as some which were going on now. The coppice field had been green and smooth as velvet the evening before, and this morning at daybreak it was brown and trampled. The skulkers and meditators of violence had been there; and the records of her father’s justice-room would show that the disgrace and punishment spoken of by Mary were fast following the destitution which is the cause of crime. She hoped Mr. Anderson did not suppose that this was the natural state in which people will always live, while congregating for the sake of the advantages of society.

Anderson hoped that men would grow wiser in time than to set up midnight drills as a remedy for the distress which always occurs from time to time; and then Mr. Fergusson would have less disagreeable justice-work to do. The ladies believed that the shortest way to obviate the folly would be to obviate the distress; and, as they moved on, were recommended to pray for a better harvest than had this year blessed the land.

John had stolen away in advance of their horses. Finding that they were proceeding to join their brothers, who had been grouse-shooting in the moors since daybreak, it occurred to the poor boy that by following in the track of the gentlemen, he might chance to pick up something which would serve as a propitiation at home for his failure in the article of corn. It was possible that a wounded bird or two might have been left by the sportsmen, and that those who could not purchase bread might sup off game:—no uncommon occurrence in a country where the tenants of a preserve are better fed than the inhabitants of a village. Half resolving to try his fortune on the other side the hills, and never to face his parents again unless he could find a black cock, John plunged into the moors, keeping the ladies in view from a distance, as a sort of guide to the track that the sportsmen had been pursuing. He had not speed of foot to sustain, for any length of time, his share of the race. The riding party disappeared in the dusk; no living thing crossed his path, but many inanimate ones put on the appearance of a fluttering bird to deceive the agitated and hungry boy; and the breeze which stirred them did not cool his brow. He could nowhere find a pool of water from which he might drink. His legs bent under him; and at the thought of how far they must yet carry him before he could reach shelter, north, south, east, or west, he began to cry.

Tears do not flow long when they may flow freely. It is the presence of restraint, or the interruption of thought, causing the painful idea to recur, which renders it difficult for a child to stop a fit of crying. John had no such restraint, and was subject to no further interruption than the silent appearance of light after light in the village below, and the survey of an occasional sheep, which came noiselessly to look at him and walk away again. By the time that the dew began to make itself felt upon his face, he was yawning instead of crying; and he rose from the turf as much from a desire to be moving again as from any anxiety as to what was to become of him this night. A manifold bleat resounded as he erected himself, and a score or two of sheep ran over one another as he moved from his resting place, giving hope that the shepherd was at no great distance. It was not long before he was seen through the grey twilight, moving on a slope a little to the west; and, to John’s delight, he turned out to be an acquaintance, Bill Hookey, who lived close by the Kays till he went upon the moors in Wilkins the grazier’s service.

“How late are you going to be out, Will?” was John’s first question.

“As late as it be before it is early,” replied Will. “Yon’s my sleeping place, and I am going to turn in when I have made out what is doing on the river there. Look farther down,—below the forge, boy. They are quiet enough this minute, or the wind is lulled. When it blows again, you may chance to hear what I heard.”

“But about sleeping,” said John. “I am mortally tired, and I’ve a great way to go home. Can’t you give me a corner in your hut till morning?”

“Why, I doubt there will be scarce room, for I promised two of my ewes that they should have shelter to-night; and this lamb is too tender, you see, to be left to itself. I don’t see how they can let you be served.”

John promised to let the ewes have the first choice of a snug corner, and to be content with any space they might leave him, explaining that he wanted to be abroad early to glean, and that it would save him a long walk to sleep on this side Anderson’s fields, instead of a mile to the east of them. He said nothing at present about his hunger, lest it should prove an objection to his abiding in Will’s company. The objection came spontaneously, however, into the mind of the prudent Will.

“I hope you’ve your supper with you, lad, or you’ll fare hardly here.”

“O, never mind supper,” said John, brushing his sleeve across his eyes. “I have gone without often enough lately.”

“Like many a one besides. Well, if you don’t mind supper, so much the better for you. I have left but a scanty one for myself, I was so mortal hungry at dinner time; and there is no more bread and milk in the jar than the lamb will want.”

“Can’t I get some fresh sweet grass for the lamb that will do as well? Do let me! Pretty creature! I should like to feed it.”

The offer was scornfully declined, and he was told that he might help any of the older lambs to graze, but that he must, at his peril, touch this particularly precious, newly-dropped lamb. John was more disposed to graze on his own account than to assist any creature in eating what he could not share. It next occurred to him to propose a bargain. He thought it promised to be a cold night. Will agreed that it might be middlingly so. John had his mother’s stout apron with him, and Will should be welcome to it to wrap the lamb in, if John might have some of the lamb’s bread and milk. Will had, however, a provokingly comfortable woollen wrapper, one end of which was always at the service of the pet lamb for the time being. While the next mode of attack was being devised, the soft pacing of horses’ feet on the turf, and the occasional striking of a hoof against a flint, were heard; and Will, offering an obeisance which was lost in the darkness, made bold to inquire what sport the gentlemen had had on the moors.

“Excellent sport, if we had bagged as many as we brought down,” answered one of the youths: “but thieves seem to be as plentiful as furze-bushes hereabouts. There were so many loiterers about our steps that our dogs could not move quick enough when we brought down more than one bird at a time.”

“There will be a savoury supper or two eaten to-night by those who sport without pulling a trigger,” observed the other Mr. Fergusson. “But they are welcome to my share of the powder and shot they have helped themselves to.”

John’s heart swelled at the thoughts of how he should like to be a sportsman after this fashion, especially as the gentleman declared that he should have been welcome.

The ladies had paused to listen to another such sound from afar as Will had described. Many of the twinkling lights from the village had disappeared, and there seemed to be a great bustle below the forge, displayed as often as the big bellows exerted themselves to throw out a peculiarly vivid flame to light up the banks of the river. Will was of opinion that the people were in a hurry for their corn, and unwilling to await Kirkland’s time for opening his granaries, and unlading his lighters. There had been talk,—as he had overheard on the moors,—of going down the river to where the lighters took in their cargoes, and demanding the distribution of the corn upon the spot. Probably this was what was now being done at Kirkland’s, instead of a few miles nearer the river’s mouth.

“It is time we were off, if that be the case,” cried one of the gentlemen. “Kirkland must not be borne down in this manner, for the people’s sake any more than for his own. Come, Charles. The girls will be safe enough with Jackson. Let us run down to the village. Here, little boy! You know Anderson’s? You know Mr. Anderson himself?”

John hung down his head, and acknowledged that he knew Mr. Anderson.

“Well, here is a shilling for you. Run to Mr. Anderson, and beg him from me to come down, with his steadiest men, if he has any, to Kirkland’s premises, as fast as possible. Off with you! What are you waiting for?”

“If he should be gone already, sir?”

“Why, then, go and call your father, if your father is not an ass, like the rest of the people hereabouts.”

John heard one of the young ladies check her brother for his expression, reminding him that nothing makes the ears grow so fast as the having an empty stomach; and the boy pondered for a moment whether his father’s ears had lengthened since the time when the family had become subject to hunger. His hand involuntarily went up to the side of his own head; and then came the speculation whether he should offer Will a high price for the lamb’s bread and milk on the spot, or wait to change his shilling at Mrs. Skipper’s counter. A sharp rebuke from his employer for his delay sent him bounding down the slope, calling up his courage to face the farmer, and consoling himself with thoughts of real white bread, dispensed under Mrs. Skipper’s bright smile.

Alas! Mrs. Skipper had no bright smile, this evening, even for John; much less for any one who had not so decided an opinion about her being very handsome. Anderson had looked full as grave as John expected, whether about the matter in hand, or the boy’s past offence, was not clear; but the farmer’s gravity was nothing to Mrs. Skipper’s terror. She scolded everybody about her, ran from one neighbour to another for advice whether to barricade her windows, and could by no means attend to John’s demand of a penny roll till he was on the point of helping himself; and, slipping the shilling into the till, Mrs. Skipper huffed him when he asked for change, and turned her back upon him so as to make him fear that he had made a more costly bargain, after all, than if he had bid for the lamb’s bread and milk upon the moor. All this was not without cause. A friendly neighbour had come up from the river-side to warn her that it had been proposed by the people assembled round Kirkland’s granaries, that, failing a supply of food from his stores, the hungry should help themselves out of the baker’s shop. It seemed but too probable that the threat would be executed; for Mrs. Skipper found (and God forgive her, she said, for being sorry to hear it!) that Kirkland was prepared for the attack; having thrown open two granaries to show that they were empty, and promised that he had something particular to say about the wheat on board the lighters; something which was likely to send the people away as hungry as they came.

A champion soon appeared in the person of Kay, who was almost the only man of the village who was not engaged on the more important scene of alarm. Women came in plenty, and children stood, like scouts, in the distance; but the women were found to be very poor comforters, and the children ran away as often as they were wanted for messengers. Mary was there; and her indifference to the danger served almost as well as Kay’s promised valour to restore spirits to Mrs. Skipper. It was something to do when the most valuable part of the stock was carried away to be hidden in some safe place, and the oldest loaves ostentatiously placed so as to be stolen first, to taunt Mary with her not caring for what happened to her friends, and looking as indifferent as if she came merely to buy a threepenny loaf. Mary made no reply; but her brother declared that he must just say for her, that if she was indifferent about other people’s concerns, so she was about her own. There was Chatham, very busy down by the river-side, with everybody listening to him but the one who had the most reason to be proud to hear what he said; and Mrs. Skipper would see, when she was cool, that it was rather hard to scold Mary for being better able to give assistance than if she was subject to being heated like some people. Mrs. Skipper begged a world of pardons. She was not half good enough for Mary to care at all about her, and she was ready to bite her tongue out for what she had said. As Mary did not intimate any wish to this effect, however, no such catastrophe took place, and the necessary disposition of affairs proceeded quietly.

Mrs. Skipper had not to wait long to know her fate. Chatham came to tell her that the people had been exasperated by finding that there was no good corn for them on Kirkland’s premises, and had gone on towards Sheffield, to burn or pull down a mill or two, it was supposed, as some faces well known at the midnight drill were seen among them. If the few who remained behind should come and ask bread of Mrs. Skipper, he advised her to give it without any show of unwillingness.

“Mercy on me! that will be hard work, if they look beyond the bread on the counter,—two days old,” cried Mrs. Skipper. “Suppose they should get at the dough, what am I to do to-morrow? And the flour! There has not been time to hide half the flour! They will want to cut my head off every day for a week to come, if they strip me of my flour, and expect me to go on baking at the same price. O, Mr. Kay, what shall I do?”

“Do as dealers in corn in another shape have done, often and often,” replied Chatham. “Bear your lot patiently as a dealer in that which the people want most, and in which they are most stinted.”

Mrs. Skipper looked doubtfully at Mary for a further explanation of what it was that she was to do.

“Do you mean,” asked Kay, “that they have stripped Kirkland of his corn, and expect him to sell more next week at the same price?”

“They would have done so, if Kirkland had had much wheat to part with. The trade of a corndealer, I have heard him and others say, has always been a hard one to carry on. All parties have joined against them, for as long a time as can be remembered.”

“Ay; the farmers are jealous, I suppose, of their coming between them and the people, thinking they could get better prices if there was nobody to be served between them and their customers. And the people, in the same way, think that they must pay higher for their bread, to enable the corndealers to live.”

“Forgetting that the farmers have something else to be doing than buying and selling corn, here and there, wherever it is wanted, and getting it from abroad when there is not enough at home, and government lets more come in. But it is not only the farmers and the people. The government used to punish the buying up of corn where it was plentiful, and selling it where it was scarce. Many a corndealer has been punished instead of thanked for doing this.”

“I do not see why any man need be thanked for doing what answers best to his own pocket, as it certainly does to buy cheap and sell dear. But to punish a man for coming between the people and want, seems to me to be more like an idle tale than anything to be believed.”

“Kirkland’s father was taken up and tried for doing this very thing, not longer ago than a dozen years or so. The law was against him, (one of the old laws that we are learning to be ashamed of;) but it was too clear that he had done no harm, for anybody to wish that he should be punished. So they let him go.”

“Who told you this?”

“Kirkland himself told us so, just now. He said he had rather be brought to his trial in the same way, than have the people take the matter into their own hands to their own injury. I thought it was very brave of him to say so at the moment.”

“Why? Were the people angry?”

“Like to tear him to pieces.”

“And he within their reach?”

“Standing on the plank between the lighter and the wharf.”

“Ugh! And they might have toppled him into the water any minute!” cried Mrs. Skipper. “I am sure I hope they won’t come near me.”

“The most angry of them are gone on, as I told you,” replied Chatham. “And that is well for you, perhaps; for never did you see angrier faces. They called out, two hundred voices like one, that it was a sin they should have to pay twenty pence for their quartern while he had a houseful of wheat stored up, and more coming.”

“And so it is, if he can get more when that is done.”

“That is the very thing he cannot be sure of doing, as he told these people they must know very well. No one can be sure beforehand when and how he may get in corn from abroad; and, at any rate, it cannot be had till it has grown monstrously dear at home; and so he insisted upon it that he was doing the wisest thing in selling his corn as others sell it, and no cheaper; that we may not eat it all up now, and starve entirely before the end of the winter.”

“Well, I grumble as much as anybody else at our having to pay twenty pence for our loaf; begging your pardon, Mrs. Skipper, whose fault I know it is not. I, with a wife and children, can’t reconcile myself to such a price. I grumble as much as anybody.”

“So do I,” said Chatham.

“Only you don’t blame Kirkland.”

“Kirkland can’t help the grievance, any more than you or I; and I am sure he suffers enough by it. There is a loss of some hundred pounds by this one cargo. It is more than half spoiled.”

“Spoiled! How?”

“The sea-water has got to it, and it is downright rotten.”

“What a pity, when it is so particularly wanted! Such accidents signify twice as much at some times as at others; and that this should happen now—just when bread is at the highest! O dear! what a pity!”

“It would not signify half so much if there was more certainly coming, and the people knew what they had to depend on. But if more is ordered, it may come or it may not; and it may be in good time, or not arrive till the season is far advanced; and so much must be paid for shipping charges (always dear in autumn), that it may mount up as high as our own home supply, after all.”

“What a worry Kirkland must be in!” observed Kay. “He is not one of the quietest at any time; and now, between hurrying his correspondents abroad, and finding his cargo spoiled at home, and having the people gathering about him with their clamour, he must feel something like a dog with a saucepan tied to its tail.”

“Not like your master, Mr. Kay,” observed Mrs. Skipper. “There is no law to meddle with his selling his brass abroad or at home, as he likes; and so he knows what to expect, and how to live with his neighbours; and has little to worry him.”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Skipper. My master is prevented selling freely abroad and at home; and prevented by the same law that worries Kirkland. And the worry is great, I can tell you; though Oliver does not run about, losing his breath and fidgeting himself like Kirkland, but walks so solemn and slow, you might take him for a Quaker.”

“Well, I thought, as his foundry is always at work, and people must have things made of brass, and nobody objecting,—I thought things went easily enough with Oliver.”

“His foundry works at night,” said Chatham, “and his metal runs as well at Christmas as at Midsummer; and yet Oliver’s prosperity depends on rain and sunshine as much as if zinc and copper were sown in the furrows and came up brass.”

“There, now,” said Mrs. Skipper, “that is one of your odd speeches, Chatham. And Mr. Kay nods as if he knew what you meant.”

“I have good reason to know,” replied Kay. “I and my fellow-workmen must have higher wages when corn is scarce, and then Oliver must put a better price upon his brass, without either his or our gaining anything by it: and then——”

“O ay; there will be less brass bought; that is what you mean.”

“Moreover, there are plenty of people abroad that want brass, and would take it if they could give us corn in exchange,—so regularly as that they and we might know what we are about. And so, as sure as sunshine or rain falls short, some of Oliver’s furnaces die out: and as sure as Kirkland’s corn-vessels might come and go, without let or hinderance, our foundry would send a light, night and day, over all the vale.”

“That is the way Chatham’s sayings come out,” observed the widow: “but I think he might as well speak plain at once, and make no mysteries.”

“I spoke plain enough about what was going to happen to you and your bread,” said Chatham, “and now you will soon see whether it comes out true; for here is the street filling fast, I see.”

“Poor souls!” cried the widow, having run out at her door to look. “They do not seem creatures to be afraid of, when one comes close to them;—so tired and lagging! I say, Dixon, won’t you have something to eat after your walk? Smith, you look worse still, and I saw how early you were off to your work this morning, and you have a good way to go to supper. Try a roll, won’t you? Come, that’s right, Bullen, set to, and tell me if it is not good bread; and you, Taylor,—carry it home to your wife, if you scruple to eat it yourself.—Bless you, make no speeches! I only wish I had more; but this is all, you see, except the dough that is laid for the morning, and that belongs to my customers, not to me.—Well; I am pleased you like it. I would have thought to get in some cheese, if I had known, before the shop was shut, that you would be passing.—Never make such a favour of it. I’ll ask the same of you some day. Or you will remember me when times mend with you.—Do look, Mr. Kay; if they be not going to cheer!—I never thought to live to be cheered.—Bless them! how hearty they are!”

And laughing, sparkling, and waving her right arm vehemently, the dame watched in their progress down the street the neighbours whose approach she had thought, an hour before, she could scarcely survive. Kay followed the munching groups, to see what they would do next; and Chatham drew Mary’s arm within his own, to escort her home, leaving the widow to bolt herself in, and survey at her leisure her bare shelves, and sweep down her empty shop-board,—soliloquizing, as she went on,

“I forgot these little sweet-cakes, or some of the children should have had them,—for they are rather stale. It is well they did not press for the dough, for I don’t believe I could have refused them anything at the moment,—and then what should I have said to the Fergussons’ man in the morning?—Well; it does look forlorn, now it is all over; and it was but this morning that I refused to take Mrs. Holmes’s ten-shilling bonnet because I thought I could not afford it; and now I have given away,—let me see how many shillings’ worth of bread! Ugh! I dare not think of it. But it is done, and can’t be undone; and besides I dare say they would have taken it, if I had not given it; and, as I bargained with them, they will do the same for me some day. Smith does look rarely bad, to be sure. I wish he be not going; though, if he be, it will be pleasant to think that one gave him a meal when he was hungry. Not that it won’t be pleasant to remember the same thing if he lives. I wonder what his poor wife’s expectation is concerning him. If she loses him, I hope she will find it no more of a trouble than I have done. So much less than I thought! I think poor Mrs. Kay droops almost as much as Smith. But there’s no knowing. Those weakly people often live the longest;—except, to be sure, when they have got into a habit like hers. Not a word has her husband ever let drop about it. I wonder whether he knows as much as I do. He shall never hear a word of it from me, nor not even Mary, though I fancy she can’t be blind. Catch Mary Kay blind to anything! For all she looks so dull and stony when she chooses, she sees as sharp as a hawk,—and has such a way of setting one down. She’s a good creature too, with all she does for those children; and nothing could be more handy than she was about the bread to-night. I wish she might chance to look in in the morning, and give me more of her handiness, to help to make the place look a little less forlorn than it does with all these empty shelves. I was very hasty, to be sure, in emptying them; but, as the parson said on Sunday, God loves a cheerful giver. So now, I will cast a look to see if the dough is rising, and go to bed; for it must be full late, I am sure.”

Chatham and Mary were meanwhile walking home, conversing after their fashion,—making six words do where others would use twenty. An incident occurred on which they understood each other without any words at all. A gleam of light fell across the street as a door on the shadowy side of the way slowly opened, to let out a woman, who walked along under the houses, slowly and with her head hung down. It was the door of the gin-shop that opened, and it would have been absurd to pretend not to know the woman. Mary instantly slackened her pace, and motioned to cross over to the dark side.

“She is steady enough,” said Chatham. “She will get on very well by herself.”

“To be sure she will. It is not quite come to that yet. But let her get home first, and not know that we have been following her. It is only merciful.”

“She shall have mercy from me;—more perhaps than from those who are answerable for her failing and sinking as she does, poor soul!”

Mary consented to turn back to the end of the street, to give a little more time, and asked whether grindstone cutting was not warm work in these sultry noons. She had learned all she wanted about grindstones by the time she could safely knock at her brother’s door with the hope that there was somebody stirring within to open it.

“I say nothing about coming in to sit with you all till Kay comes, because——”

“I was not going to ask you to-night. To-morrow evening, perhaps. Good night now. I hear her coming. Good night.”

And Chatham was out of sight from within, before Mrs. Kay, her bonnet off, and her cap somehow not put on, opened the door, and left Mary to fasten it.

Chapter III.
FASTERS AND FEASTERS.

There were two opposite lights on the horizon that night, to those who looked out from the village. While the moon sank serenely behind the dark western hills, a red flame shot up, amidst volumes of wreathing smoke, in the direction of Sheffield. Some persons were trying the often-repeated experiment of gaining bread by the destruction of that by which bread is gained. A metal-mill was gutted, its machinery broken, and its woodwork burned, because the sea water had got to Kirkland’s corn; and more mills were threatened in case the price of bread did not fall within a few days. As no one could answer for the price of bread falling within the time specified, the only thing to be done was to take measures to avert the promised destruction. For this purpose, strict inquiries were made as to what the inhabitants of the district had been about the preceding evening; who had gone home from the harvest-field; who attended the arrival of Kirkland’s corn; and how many there were who could give no good account of themselves. Early in the morning the officers of justice were abroad, and Mr. Fergusson and his sons were seen riding about, greeted not the less respectfully wherever they went from its being known that their object was to bring some of their neighbours to justice. Mr. Fergusson’s character stood too high among his tenants to allow of their thinking the worse of him under any misfortunes that might happen. Let him do what he might in his character of magistrate, he was trusted to do what was right, as he showed himself, on all occasions, not only compassionate to the sufferings of the people, but as wise in discerning the causes of the suffering as anxious to relieve it when relief was in his power. Accordingly, hats were touched when he looked in the faces of those whom he met this morning, and ready answers given to his inquiries where the innocent were called upon to speak, and respectful ones from the guilty, when the necessity came upon them of making out a case. All the complaisance that there was, however, was engrossed by the Mr. Fergussons. The constables got only sneers and short answers, and men and women looked suspiciously on one another all through the district, none knowing what a neighbour might have the power to tell. Perhaps so many cross words were never spoken in one day in the vale, as the day after the burning of Halsted’s mill. “What do you look at me for? You had better look to yourself,” was the common sentiment at the forge, in the field, and on the alehouse bench. As for the children, they were so perplexed with instructions what they were to say, that it was only to be hoped no one would ask them any questions.

It was not to be supposed that Mrs. Skipper could stay quietly at home while strangers were passing up and down the street about whom her journeyman could give her no information, and while reports were travelling round of one neighbour and another being compromised. She burst in at Kay’s, just after he was gone to his work, when his wife was preparing to put away breakfast, and Mary was beating out the corn which she had gleaned the evening before, and which was destined to the mill this day.

“I have not brought you a hot roll this morning, Mrs. Kay; no, nor so much as a crust. I cannot afford any more of that at present; and so you will not look for it from me.”

“What do you speak in that way to me for? I don’t know what you mean,” said Mrs. Kay, with an angry, puzzled stare.

“Nor I what you would be at, I’m sure,” replied Mrs. Skipper. “One would not believe you were the soft-spoken Mrs. Kay, now-a-days. You can be sharper in your speech than ever I am, let me tell you.”

“That is the more reason why you should be soft in yours,” said Mary. “She has borne with you sometimes, when you have been better in health than she is now.”

“Well; that is true: and she does look so poorly.... Ah! now, there’s master John coming out with a speech about my fresh colour again.”

John was not thinking about anybody’s colour. He wanted to know whether it was not true that he had had eleven-pence change from her the night before.

“To be sure you had, after taking a penny roll.”

John called his mother to witness, that she might tell his father, that he was in possession of a shilling before the troubles began at Kirkland’s; to say nothing of those farther on. His father had doubted his getting that shilling honestly, and had desired his mother to take possession of the eleven pence till the whole was unquestionably accounted for; and now John wanted his money back again. Mrs. Kay did not, however, heed his request; and the matter ended in Mary’s persuading the boy that if he had the money by the time he was at liberty to go out, it would do very well, instead of pressing for it now that his mother was busy thinking of something else.

“Why, take care, Mrs. Kay!” cried her neighbour. “Your hand shakes so, you will certainly let the dish down, and that will cost you more than a meal of my best bread would have done. Well! that is a beautiful potato to have left among the peelings. And here’s another! I wonder you let the children scatter their food about in that manner.”

“’Tis not the children,” observed Mary. “They have not more than they are very willing to eat, poor things! Their mother has but little appetite, and she is apt to slip her food back into the dish, that it may not make her husband uneasy.—I want your help more than she does,” she continued, seeing that Mrs. Skipper’s officious assistance was obstinately refused by the poor woman. “Will you step behind, and help me to beat and winnow my corn, if you have a minute to spare?”

With all her heart, Mrs. Skipper said; but she had an errand, though it was not to bring cider or hot bread. She had learned the secret of making potato-bread: not the doughy, distasteful stuff that many people were eating, but light, digestible, palatable bread. She would not tell the secret to everybody,—giving away her own trade; but when she saw a family of old friends eating potatoes, morning, noon, and night, she could not help telling them how they might get something better.

Mary thanked her, and observed that she did not know how she could put her gleaned corn to a better use than in making the experiment of a batch of mixed flour and potato-bread.

“Ah! do; and I will treat you to the baking, and look well to it myself. For my credit’s sake, you know; having set you to try. Come, let us have the corn beat out.”

They went to the back of the house to thresh and winnow, and then the widow’s first exclamation was about how sadly out of sorts Mrs. Kay seemed to be.

“These are not times for her,” replied Mary. “They bear harder upon such as she was than upon anybody. Who could have thought, you know, when she was an only child, brought up delicately for a poor man’s daughter, that she would come to loathe a potato breakfast, and have no other?”

“Bless you! I know,” whispered the widow, with a wise look. “People may take things over-night that leave them no sense, nor temper, nor appetite in the morning. My dear, I see how it is.”

Mary was apparently too busy with the wheat to take any notice of this intimation. The next thing she said was,

“Where are all the potatoes to come from that will be wanted if people take to this new sort of bread? and indeed whether they do or not; for potatoes they must eat, either by themselves or made into bread. How are we to get enough?”

“The price is rising, they say; faster than the price of anything else, except corn: and if you go up yonder towards the moors, you will see what a quantity of new ground is being taken up for growing potatoes. I have had half a mind to try what I could do with a bit of a field myself. Anderson knows what he is about, generally; and what he tries in a large way might be safe for such as we in a small.”

“I would not try,” replied Mary.

“No, not if you were me, because you think I fly from one thing to another, and do myself harm.”

“Besides,” said Mary, attempting no denial, “how will it be with you next year, if there should chance to be a fine wheat and barley crop? People do not live on potatoes when they can get bread; and I am sure it is not to be wished that they should. I hope there will be much less demand for potatoes next year; and it is likely there will. We have had so many bad seasons, it cannot be long before a good one comes.”

“And then what a pity it will be that so much money has been spent in fencing and managing these potato-grounds! It may chance to come to be worth while to turn the sheep on again. That would be a pity.”

“Say rather it is a pity they were ever turned off. The land on the moors is much more fit for them than for us to feed off; and leaving them there would leave the money that is spent on the land (more than it is worth, if matters went on in their usual course) to be used in a more profitable way.”

“In what way?”

“Why; take your own case. If you pay so much for hedging and ditching, and draining, and manuring the potato-ground you have a mind for, and the crop brings you no more next year than the same plot now brings as a sheep-feed, is not the money just lost that was laid out in making a field of it? My opinion is that it would bring less; and if it does not, it ought to do. Our people will be badly off indeed if food is so high next year as to make them take your potatoes at a price that would make your bargain a good one; and if they are obliged to do so, they will be eating up in those potatoes the money that should have set some of them to work at weaving or cutlery-employment. Better buy corn of Kirkland when we can, and let the sheep graze on.”

“Ay, when we can. There is the very thing. If we could always do that, as much as we pleased, we should not spend much of our money on the moors; but it is because it is all a chance whether we shall be buying of Kirkland next year, that one thinks of taking the chance of potatoes selling well.”

“I would not.”

“No, not you. You would spend your money, if you had any, in a little bargain of grindstones, for the sake of a certain person.”

“That would depend on the price of potatoes,” replied Mary, smiling, “for they would depend on the price of corn; and on the price of corn mainly depends the cutlery trade; and where is the use of grindstones unless the cutlery business flourishes?”

“There is another thing to be looked to; and that is, that those you help in cutting grindstones do not get themselves into trouble;—ay, by being abroad at night, and having the constables after them in the day. I would have you consider that, my dear. Mercy! how frightened you look,—as white as my apron! Now, don’t push me away because I let out a thing that made you frightened.”

“Angry—very angry,” said Mary.

“Not with me, to be sure; for I did not make it, be it true or not true; though I need not have cast it in your teeth as I did. It was Dick Rose told me; and he said he knew it from——”

“Do get me a little vinegar, Mrs. Skipper. I never pinched my finger so smartly before. I shall not be able to get my thimble on this week.”

“Well, now, it was that made you turn white, while you pretended to be so angry with me that you made my heart beat in my throat. I shall know you now another time, mistress Mary.”

“Not you,” thought Mary, as her giddy companion bustled into the house for vinegar.

“I don’t see your sister,” said she, returning, “but I guessed where to look for the vinegar. Is the pain going? Well, only do you ask Dick Rose about how the folks were seen creeping out of the quarry, one by one,—those that worked there, and some strangers that came to visit them; and how——”

“I shall not ask Dick Rose any such thing, when there is a person that can tell me so much better,” said Mary.

“Ay, if he will.”

“John, fetch me the large blue apron,” cried Mary; “and bring out Nanny with you. I promised she should lend a hand, and see the chaff fly.”

Before John could reach the door, a sharp scream,—the scream of a child,—was heard from within. Mary flew to see what had happened, but just as she was entering, her brother, seeing that some one was behind her, slammed the door in her face, and was heard to bolt it. Mrs. Skipper would not listen to what she had to say about the child having a fall, but exclaimed,

“Well, I should not have thought Mr. Kay could have behaved in that manner to you; and he looked at me quite fierce, so as I thought had not been in his nature.”

And she stepped to the window to tap, and ask an explanation: but she caught a glimpse of something that quieted her, and sent her to stoop down over the wheat again, without looking at Mary, or speaking another word. Kay was carrying his wife up stairs. The helpless arm, hanging over his shoulder, was just visible, and the awe-struck children, suspending their crying, moved Mrs. Skipper to concern too deep to be expressed in her usual giddy speech.

“Which way are you going?” asked Mary at length. “I am off for the mill, as soon as I can get in to take the children with me.”

“And I home; and you may depend on me, you know for what. My tongue does run too fast sometimes, I know; but you may depend on me, as it was only by a chance that I was here.”

“Thank you!” replied Mary, warmly. “And I will take it kindly of you to show me the way about the bread, as soon as my corn is ground.”

By the united resources of the children within, the door was unbolted, and the party allowed egress into the street, when Mrs. Skipper turned down, and Mary up; the children asking her, one to go out of the way for the sake of the pond on the heath, and another hoping to jump down five steps of the mill-ladder, four having been achieved last time. Mary would have been glad to forget their mother as easily as they.

When Warden saw her toiling up the slope on the top of which the mill stood, her bundle on her head, and a child tugging at each side of her gown, he civilly came down to relieve her, and told her that she was more welcome than on the occasion of her last visit. It was a fine breezy day, he observed, and perhaps she might like to look about her from the top of the mill, if she did not mind the shaking that there always was in a wind. Mary thanked him, but dared not leave the children, lest they should put themselves in the way of the sails. This difficulty was soon obviated by the miller’s taking the girl upon his shoulder, and calling to his man to bring up the boy, and let him play among the sacks in the first story, or climb higher, as he liked.

“I suppose you saw the fire finely from here, if you chanced to be looking out last night,” Mary observed.

“My man did, as he stayed to take advantage of the wind. He says it lighted up every turn of the river between this and Sheffield. You may see the smoke still, among the other smoke. Half the country has flocked there this morning, my father-in-law told me just now, as he passed on his way to pay his rent. It is a good time to choose to pay his rent, when every body is thinking of something else than emptying his pockets. Otherwise, it is not the safest and pleasantest thing in the world to be carrying money over the by-road between this and Fergusson’s. Yonder he goes,” continued the miller, stooping to the little girl whom he was keeping steady with his arm round her waist. “Yonder goes Mr. Anderson, on his black mare. You may see him trotting along the lane between those young oaks.”

“He will come back slower in the evening, when he has left his money behind him,” observed Mary.

“He will not wait till evening. He will just finish with the steward, and come home again, for the Mr. Fergussons are abroad over the country to-day; and besides, my father-in-law is wanted at home every hour of the day while the improvements are going on. Look how busy he is thereabouts.”

“I see; they drive the poor sheep higher and higher up the moors, with their walls and their ditches.”

“Yes, year by year. Before these many bad seasons, the sheep used to browse on this very slope where my mill stands. I used to come up among the bleaters every morning.”

“You speak as if the bad seasons were the cause of the change.”

“And so they are, mainly. Where numbers increase as they have done here in my time, more food will be wanted at all events, be the seasons what they may. But when the soil yields scantily, for years together, the inclosing will go on faster, from the cry for food. Yonder field, red even now with poppies, would never have been sown if the nine-acres in the bottom had yielded as they ought. The nine-acres used to yield as much as was reaped this year in itself and the poppy-field together.”

“And there has been all the cost of taking it in besides.”

“Yes; and my father-in-law does wisely to pay that cost (if he must pay it) before his rent is raised. He and the steward will have an argument about that rent to-day, I fancy. The lease will be up soon now, and rents are rising every where; and I suppose my father-in-law is content to let his mount up too. He would not otherwise be carrying on all these works.”

“I wonder at his being content to pay more rent after so many short harvests.”

“It is easier than after larger; for corn sells dear, more than in proportion to its scarcity. Nobody can tell you better than Anderson that a single short harvest makes a heavy pocket; much more a succession of short harvests.”

“Till the poor get a-head of the rate-payers, I suppose,—no longer. When Mr. Anderson has to maintain half of us down in the village, because we cannot buy food, he will find us lighten his pockets as fast as bad years can fill them.”

“The manufacturers must help him then. They must raise their people’s wages——”

“And so must Anderson.”

“They must raise their people’s wages, and maintain the poor in the towns, and in the working villages.”

“I wish the manufacturers joy of their good nature. They first pay dear for their own bread, and then pay dear for the labour which is to buy their workmen’s bread, and then spend what profits are left in supporting those whose labour they cannot employ; and all to make Anderson’s and other farmers’ pockets heavy for a little while after bad seasons. I wish them joy of their patience.”

“Anderson will want patience too, when his turn comes. Depend upon it, as soon as he gets fairly saddled with a high rent and high rates, there will come a fine crop or two to make prices as low in proportion as they now are high. He cannot bring down his men’s wages all in a day; much less can the rates be disburthened at once; and so it will be well if he makes ready beforehand for such a change.”

“I hope he does make ready; but what I see there looks little like it.”

“What, you mean the bay-window and balcony now making to my house, and the shrubbery he is laying out. All that was no wish of mine, for I thought the white house looked very neat as it was before; and the bit of garden behind was as much as my wife and I had time to attend to. But her father liked that his daughter’s house should be improving while he was adding so much to his own, and he made us accept of the alteration, whether we would or no. He said, that while he was sending my wife’s sister to Paris, and bringing up her brothers to look higher than he once thought of for them, he could not leave her neglected, as if he was ashamed of her having married more humbly than the other girls will do.”

“And his own house looks hardly like the same place. His having built up among all the rambling old parts gives it one face as a whole.”

“Yes; three more bad years, and it will look like a gentleman’s mansion. Yes, yes; these are the joyous rent-days, when the steward gets every farthing, and pretends to shake his head because it is no more; and when the farmers try to look dismal about the short crops, and then sing merry songs over their ale,—such of them as have not taken to port. Well, the millers’ day will come in time, it is to be hoped.”

“When will that be?”

“When the people are not setting their wits to work to make potato-bread, and eating every thing that grows rather than flour. We have had more going and coming, more watching and jealousy about waste, and more grumbling because we cannot grind for nothing,—more trouble of all sorts about a few trumpery bundles of gleanings this last week, than about fifty sacks when I first became a miller.”

“I will give you as little trouble as I can with mine,” said Mary; “but you must not call it a trumpery bundle, for it is worth much to me. If you knew how much, I might trust you not to waste any of it.”

“You would not dream of my wasting, if you saw how carefully I look to every grain. Why, I drive away the very birds themselves, if they light when the sails stop at any time. We do not leave the sweepings to them and the wind, as we used to do, but sift them as a housemaid sifts for pins. That is the reason why I do not offer your young master a handfull for the pigeons, as I used to do.”

“Don’t think of it, pray. He is going to play with the ducks on the pond as we go home, and that will do as well: besides, I hear him laughing now, merry enough without the pigeons.”

“Playing hide and seek with Jerry among the sacks, I fancy.”

“Where he must have done playing for to-day,” observed Mary. “How quiet every place looks for a working day!” she continued, giving one more glance round the horizon before she descended. “Except the sheep, creeping like mites on the uplands, and the labourers gathering like ants about the new inclosures, I see nobody stirring.”

“I seldom see it so quiet, except on a starlight night, when there is no noise but the whizzing of the sails when they go by starts; or perhaps an owl from my gable. But you see the people in the quarries stick to their work, as if they had no share in what was doing last night.” And the miller looked full at Mary as he spoke. “I see a man or two with his pick in yonder stone-pit, hewing away as if nothing had happened. Cannot you see them? Well, it is a wonder your head has stood the shaking in this breeze for so long. Many people can fix their sight on nothing after the first two minutes.”

Mary was determined to see more of the quarries before she went home than could be discerned from the mill-top. She let one child peep into the hopper to see how the corn ran down to be ground, and the other to exhibit his jump of five steps, with a topple at the end of it, and then walked quickly away towards the part of the heath where bilberries were to be found, and where she thought she might leave her charge safely employed while she looked into the quarry to see whether Chatham was really there, and whether or not he had had any transactions with the constables since she saw him last.

Chapter IV.
A POOR MAN’S INDUCTION.

It took but a little time to show the children how to find bilberries, and not very much longer to teach them not to eat what they found; after which Mary was at liberty to walk round to the mouth of the stone-quarry, beside which the fashioning of grindstones went on, in subservience to the cutlery business of Sheffield. She avoided the sheds where the sawing and smoothing proceeded, and looked only among the men who were excavating the stone. But few were at work this day; Chatham was one of them. He was engaged high up, with his face to the rock, and having no glances to spare for the scene below him, or for the narrow, rough path by which his present position must be attained.

Mary had never been here before, and she lingered in hopes that Chatham might turn, and encourage her to go on. She gathered rag-wort from the moist recesses by the way, and paused to observe how the ivy was spreading over a portion of the stone face of the quarry which had been left untouched for some time, and to listen to the water trickling down among the weeds by a channel which it had worn for itself. As Chatham still did not turn, she proceeded to climb the path, being aware that children who were playing in the bottom had given notice of her presence, and that face after face peeped out from beneath the sheds to gaze, and then disappeared again. When at length she laid her hand on the arm of the toiling man, he started as if his tool had broken under his blow.

“Mary! what brought you here?”

“I heard that the constables were after you.”