Barraclough was going to speak.

“Silence! You have had your say, and now I will have mine. As to being dictated to by you, or any Jack, Jem, or Jonathan on earth, I shall not suffer it for a moment. You desire me to quit the country; you request me to part with my machinery. In case I refuse, you threaten me. I do refuse – point-blank! Here I stay, and by this mill I stand, and into it will I convey the best machinery inventors can furnish. What will you do? The utmost you can do – and this you will never dare to do – is to burn down my mill, destroy its contents, and shoot me. What then? Suppose that building was a ruin and I was a corpse – what then, you lads behind these two scamps? Would that stop invention or exhaust science? Not for the fraction of a second of time! Another and better gig mill would rise on the ruins of this, and perhaps a more enterprising owner come in my place. Hear me! I’ll make my cloth as I please, and according to the best lights I have. In its manufacture I will employ what means I choose. Whoever, after hearing this, shall dare to interfere with me may just take the consequences. An example shall prove I’m in earnest.”

He whistled shrill and loud. Sugden, his staff and warrant, came on the scene.

Moore turned sharply to Barraclough. “You were at Stilbro,’” said he; “I have proof of that. You were on the moor, you wore a mask, you knocked down one of my men with your own hand – you! a preacher of the gospel! – Sugden, arrest him!”

Moses was captured. There was a cry and a rush to rescue, but the right hand which all this while had lain hidden in Moore’s breast, reappearing, held out a pistol.

“Both barrels are loaded,” said he. “I’m quite determined! Keep off!”

Stepping backwards, facing the foe as he went, he guarded his prey to the counting house. He ordered Joe Scott to pass in with Sugden and the prisoner, and to bolt the door inside. For himself, he walked backwards and forwards along the front of the mill, looking meditatively on the ground, his hand hanging carelessly by his side, but still holding the pistol. The eleven remaining deputies watched him some time, talking under their breath to each other. At length one of them approached. This man looked very different from either of the two who had previously spoken; he was hard-favoured, but modest and manly-looking.

“I’ve not much faith i’ Moses Barraclough,” said he, “and I would speak a word to you myseln, Mr. Moore. It’s out o’ no ill-will that I’m here, for my part; it’s just to mak a effort to get things straightened, for they’re sorely a-crooked. Ye see we’re ill off – varry ill off; wer families is poor and pined. We’re thrown out o’ work wi’ these frames; we can get nought to do; we can earn nought. What is to be done? Mun we say, wisht! and lig us down and dee? Nay; I’ve no grand words at my tongue’s end, Mr. Moore, but I feel that it wad be a low principle for a reasonable man to starve to death like a dumb cratur. I willn’t do’t. I’m not for shedding blood: I’d neither kill a man nor hurt a man; and I’m not for pulling down mills and breaking machines – for, as ye say, that way o’ going on’ll niver stop invention; but I’ll talk – I’ll mak as big a din as ever I can. Invention may be all right, but I know it isn’t right for poor folks to starve. Them that governs mun find a way to help us; they mun make fresh orderations. Ye’ll say that’s hard to do. So mich louder mun we shout out then, for so much slacker will t’ Parliament-men be to set on to a tough job.”