finds the weak places," added Mr. Churchouse. "No
man over sixty has much good to say of the east wind."

"Well, the works are healthy enough and competition is merely a tonic to
us. We hold our own from year to year, and I've reached a conviction
that my policy of ruthlessly scrapping machinery the moment it's even on
the down grade, is the only sound principle and pays in the long run.
And now I want something new in the advertisement line--something not
mechanical at all, but human and interesting--calculated to attract, not
middlemen and retailers, but the person who buys our string and rope to
use it. In fact I want a little book about the romance of spinning, so
that people may look at a ball of string, or shoe-thread, or
fishing-line, intelligently, and realise about one hundredth part of all
that goes to its creation. Now you could do a thing like that to
perfection, Uncle Ernest, because you know the business inside out."

Mr. Churchouse was much pleased.

"An excellent idea--a brilliant idea, Raymond! We must insist on the
romance of spinning--the poetry."

"I don't want it to be too flowery, but just interesting and direct. A
glimpse of the raw material growing, then the history of its
manufacture."

Ernest's eyes sparkled.

"From the beginning--from the very beginning," he said. "Pliny tells us
how the Romans used hemp for their sails at the end of the first
century. Is not the English word 'canvas' only 'cannabis' over again?
Herodotus speaks of the hempen robes of the Thracians as equal to linen
in fineness. And as for cordage, the ships of Syracuse in 200 B.C.--"

He was interrupted.

"That's all right, but what I rather fancy is the development of the
modern industry--here in Dorset."

"Good--that would follow with all manner of modern instances."

Mr. Churchouse drew a book from one of his shelves.

"In Tudor times it was ordered by Act of Parliament that ropes should be
twisted and made nowhere else than here. Leland, that industrious
chronicler, came to grief in this matter, for he calls Bridport 'a fair,
large town,' where 'be made good daggers.' He shows the danger of taking
words too literally, since a 'Bridport dagger' is only another name for
the hangman's rope."

"That's the sort of thing," said Raymond. "An article we can illustrate,
showing the hemp and flax growing in Russia and Italy, then all the
business of pulling, steeping and retting, drying and scutching. That
would be o