company who attended it, describing each individual, their social rank
or station, their physical and mental peculiarities, their dress and
even their ornaments or jewelry. This account was read to all the
family, then dated, sealed and carefully placed among the records and
heirlooms of Hatton Hall. The receptacle containing these precious
relics was a very large, heavily carved oak chest, standing in the
Master's room. This chest was iron-bound, triple-locked, and required
four strong men to lift it, and the family traditions asserted it had
stood in its present place for three hundred and forty years. It was the
palladium of Hatton Hall and was regarded with great honor and
affection.

After this event there were no more attempts at festivity. The clouds
gathered quickly and a silent gloom settled over all the cotton-spinning
and weaving districts of England. But I shall only touch this subject as
it refers to the lives and characters of my story. Its facts and
incidents are graven on thousands of lives and chronicled in numerous
authentic histories. It is valuable here as showing how closely mankind
is now related and that the cup of sorrow we have to drink may be
mingled for us at the ends of the earth by people whose very names are
strange on our lips. Then

... "Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er years."

Very sorrowful years in which the strong grew stronger, and the weak
perished, unless carried in the Everlasting Arms. Three of them had
passed in want and suffering, constantly growing more acute. Mill after
mill closed, and the dark, quiet buildings stood among the starving
people like monuments of despair. No one indeed can imagine the pathos
of these black deserted factories, that had once blazed with sunlight
and gaslight and filled the town with the stir of their clattering looms
and the traffic of their big lorries and wagons and the call and song of
human voices. In their blank, noiseless gloom, they too seemed to
suffer.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: I need hardly remind my readers that I refer to the war of
1861 between the Northern and Southern States. At this time it was in
its third year, and the Southern States were closely blockaded and no
cotton allowed to leave them. Consequently the cotton-spinning counties
of Yorkshire and Lancashire were soon destitute of the necessary staple,
and to be "out of cotton" meant to more than a million cotton-spin