"My dear Harry," she said, in her clear vibrant voice, "my dear lad,
John and I have just been talking of Wesley and how he came to light our
hearthstone. You see, poor Squire Yates' fire went out last night."

"Never! Surely never, mother!"

"It did, my dear. Yates has no son, he is old and forgetful, and his
nephew, who is only a Ramsby, was at Thornton market race, and nobody
thought of the fire, and so out it went. They do say the squire is dying
today. Well, then, Hatton Hall has two sons to guard her hearth, and I
want to tell you, Harry, how our fire was saved not thirty years ago.
Your grandfather was then growing poor and poorer every year, and with a
heavy heart he was think, think, thinking of some plan to save the dear
old home.

"One morning your father was walking round the Woodleigh meadows, for he
thought if we sold them, and the Woodleigh house, we might put off
further trouble for a while and give Good Fortune time to turn round and
find a way to help us. And as he was walking and thinking Ezra Topham
met him. Now, then, Ezra and your father were chief friends, even from
their boyhood, and their fathers before them good friends, and indeed,
as you know the Yorkshire way in friendship, it might go back of that
and that again. And Ezra said these very words,

"'Stephen, I'm going to America. My heart and hands were never made for
trading and cotton-spinning. I hev been raised on the land. I hev lived
on the land and eaten and drunk what the land gave me. All my
forefathers did the same, and the noise and smell of these new-fangled
factories takes the heart out of me. I hev a bit of brass left, and
while I hev it I am going to buy me a farm where good land is sold by
the acre and not by feet and inches. Now, then, I'll sell thee my mill,
and its fifty looms, and heppen it may do cheerfully for thee what it
will not do anyway for me. Will tha buy it?'"

"Poor chap!" interrupted Harry. "I know just how he felt. I am sorry for
him."

"You needn't be anything of that sort, Harry. He is a big landowner now
and a senator and a millionaire. So save thy pity for someone that needs
it. As I was saying, he offered to sell his mill to thy father and thy
father snapped at the offer, and it was settled there and then as they
stood in Woodleigh meadows."

"What did father pay for it?" asked Harry.

"Nay, my dear, I cannot tell thee. Thy father never told his women folk
what he made or what he spent. It wasn't