ebbe they'll be a bit better off there, sir. I don't think they
will."

"Not a bit."

"And while you were away Jeremiah Stokes left his loom forever. It
didn't put him out any. It was a stormy night for the flitting--thunder
and lightning and wind and rain--but he went smiling and whispering,

"There is a land of pure delight!"

"The woman, poor soul, had a harder journey."

"Who was she?"

"Susanna Dobson. You remember the little woman that came from Leeds?"

"Yes. Loom forty. I hope she has not left a large family."

"Nay, if there had been a big family, she would varry likely hev been at
her loom today"--then there were a few softly spoken words, and John
walked forward, but he could not forget how singularly the empty loom
had appealed to him on that last morning he had walked through the mill
with Greenwood. There are strange coincidences and links in events of
which we know nothing at all--occult, untraceable altogether, material,
yet having distinct influences not over matter but over some one mind or
heart.

A little before closing time Greenwood said, "Julius Yorke will be
spreading himself all over Hatton tonight. A word or two from thee, sir,
might settle him a bit."

"I think you settled him very well last night."

"It suited me to do so. I like to threep a man that is my equal in his
head piece. Yorke is nobbut a hunchbacked dwarf and he talks a lot of
nonsense, but he _feels_ all he says. He's just a bit of crooked
humanity on fire and talking at white heat."

"What was he talking about?"

"Rights and wrongs, of course. There was a good deal of truth in what he
said, but he used words I didn't like; they came out of some
blackguard's dictionary, so I told him to be quiet, and when he wouldn't
be quiet, we sung him down with a verse out o' John Wesley's hymn-book."

"All right! You are a match for Yorke, Greenwood. I will leave him to
you. I am very weary. The last two days have been hard ones."

There was a tone of pathos in John's words and voice and Greenwood
realized it. He touched his cap, and turned away. "Married men hev their
own tribulations," he muttered. "I hev had a heartache mysen all day
long about the way Polly went on this morning. And her with such a good
husband as I am!"

Greenwood went home to such discouraging reflections, and John's were
just as discomforting. For he had left his wife on the previous night,
in a distressed unsettled condition, and he felt that t