“I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriage – I mean marriage in the vulgar weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment – two beggarly fools agreeing to unite their indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling. Humbug! But an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in consonance with dignity of views and permanency of solid interests, is not so bad – eh?”

“No,” responded Moore, in an absent manner. The subject seemed to have no interest for him; he did not pursue it. After sitting for some time gazing at the fire with a preoccupied air, he suddenly turned his head.

“Hark!” said he. “Did you hear wheels?”

Rising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. He soon closed it. “It is only the sound of the wind rising,” he remarked, “and the rivulet a little swollen, rushing down the hollow. I expected those wagons at six; it is near nine now.”

“Seriously, do you suppose that the putting up of this new machinery will bring you into danger?” inquired Malone. “Helstone seems to think it will.”

“I only wish the machines – the frames – were safe here, and lodged within the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy the frame-breakers. Let them only pay me a visit and take the consequences. My mill is my castle.”

“One despises such low scoundrels,” observed Malone, in a profound vein of reflection. “I almost wish a party would call upon you tonight; but the road seemed extremely quiet as I came along. I saw nothing astir.”

“You came by the Redhouse?”

“Yes.”

“There would be nothing on that road. It is in the direction of Stilbro’ the risk lies.”

“And you think there is risk?”

“What these fellows have done to others they may do to me. There is only this difference: most of the manufacturers seem paralyzed when they are attacked. Sykes, for instance, when his dressing shop was set on fire and burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his tenters and left in shreds in the field, took no steps to discover or punish the miscreants: he gave up as tamely as a rabbit under the jaws of a ferret. Now I, if I know myself, should stand by my trade, my mill, and my machinery.”

“Helstone says these three are your gods; that the ‘Orders in Council’ are with you another name for the seven deadly sins; that Castlereagh is your Antichrist, and the war party his legions.”

“Yes; I abhor all these things because they ruin me. They stand in my way. I cannot get on. I cannot execute my plans because of them. I see myself baffled at every turn by their untoward effects.”

“But you are rich and thriving, Moore?”

“I am very rich in cloth I cannot sell. You should step into my warehouse yonder, and observe how it is piled to the roof with pieces. Roakes and Pearson are in the same condition. America used to be their market, but the Orders in Council have cut that off.”

Malone did not seem prepared to carry on briskly a conversation of this sort. He began to knock the heels of his boots together, and to yawn.

“And then to think,” continued Mr. Moore who seemed too much taken up with the current of his own thoughts to note the symptoms of his guest’s ennui—“to think that these ridiculous gossips of Whinbury and Briarfield will keep pestering one about being married! As if there was nothing to be done in life but to ‘pay attention,’ as they say, to some young lady, and then to go to church with her, and then to start on a bridal tour, and then to run through a round of visits, and then, I suppose, to be ‘having a family.’ Oh, que le diable emporte!” He broke off the aspiration into which he was launching with a certain energy, and added, more calmly, “I believe women talk and think only of these things, and they naturally fancy men’s minds similarly occupied.”