where she knelt in the front room, with her eyes and mouth wide
open as the door, and Martha was slowly rubbing her nose with the
black-lead brush and waiting for him to speak.

"Put on your hat and come down to the works," he said.

We moved by one impulse into the passage, and as we reached the door
Mrs Stephenson cried:

"Brackfass won't be long;" and then the sound of black-leading went on.

"Now, then," said Uncle Dick as we reached the street, "what is it?
Anything very wrong?"

"Terribly," said Uncle Jack.

"Well, what is it? Why don't you speak?"

"Come and see for yourself," said Uncle Jack bitterly. "I thought
matters were smoothing down, but they are getting worse, and I feel
sometimes that we might as well give up as carry on this unequal war."

"No: don't give up, Uncle Jack," I cried. "Let's fight the cowards."

"Bring them into the yard then so that we can fight them," he cried
angrily. "The cowardly back-stabbers; sneaks in the dark. I couldn't
have believed that such things could go on in England."

"Well, but we had heard something about what the Arrowfield men could
do, and we knew about how in the Lancashire district the work-people
used to smash new machinery."

"There, wait till you've seen what has happened," cried Uncle Jack
angrily. "You've just risen after a night's rest. I've come to you
after a night's watching, and you and I feel differently about the same
thing."

Very little more was said before we reached the works, where the first
thing I saw was a group of men round the gate, talking together with
their hands in their pockets.

Gentles was among them, smoking a short black pipe, and he shut his eyes
at me as we passed, which was his way of bestowing upon me a smile.

When we passed through the gate the men followed as if we were a set of
doctors about to put something right for them, and as if they had been
waiting for us to come.

Uncle Bob was standing by the door as we came across the yard, and as
soon as we reached him he turned in and we followed.

There was no occasion for him to speak; he just walked along the great
workshop, pointing to right and left, and we saw at once why the men
were idling about.

Few people who read this will have any difficulty in understanding what
wheel-bands are. They used to be very common in the streets, joining
the wheels of the knife-grinders' barrows, and now in almost every house
they are seen in the domestic treadle