inner, Dick."

"Very good, sir," answered Mr. Gurd; but he shook his head when the
young men had gone.

Others in the bar hummed on the subject of young Ironsyde after his back
was turned. A few stood up for him and held that he had been too
severely dealt with; but the majority and those who knew most about him
thought that his ill-fortune was deserved.

"For look at it," said a tradesman, who knew the facts. "If he'd been
left money, he'd have only wasted the lot in sporting and been worse off
after than before; but now he's up against work, and work may be the
saving of him. And if he won't work, let him die the death and get off
the earth and make room for a better man."

None denied the honourable obligation to work for every responsible
human being.

CHAPTER III

THE HACKLER

The warehouse of Bridetown Mill adjoined the churchyard wall and its
northern windows looked down upon the burying ground. The store came
first and then the foreman's home, a thatched dwelling bowered in red
and white roses, with the mill yard in front and a garden behind. From
these the works were separated by the river. Bride came by a mill race
to do her share, and a water wheel, conserving her strength, took it to
the machinery. For Benny Cogle's engine was reinforced by the river.
Then, speeding forward, Bride returned to her native bed, which wound
through the valley south of the works.

A bridge crossed the river from the yard and communicated with the
mills--a heterogeneous pile of dim, dun colours and irregular roofs
huddled together with silver-bright excrescences of corrugated iron. A
steady hum and drone as of some gigantic beehive ascended from the
mills, and their combined steam and water power produced a tremor of
earth and a steady roar in the air; while a faint dust storm often
flickered about the entrance ways.

The store-house reeked with that fat, heavy odour peculiar to hemp and
flax. It was a lofty building of wide doors and few windows. Here in the
gloom lay bales and stacks of raw material. Italy, Russia, India, had
sent their scutched hemp and tow to Bridetown. Some was in the rough;
the dressed line had already been hackled and waited in bundles of long
hemp composed of wisps, or 'stricks' like horses' tails. The silver and
amber of the material made flashes of brightness in the dark storerooms
and drew the light to their shining surfaces. Tall, brown posts
supported the rafters, and in the twilig