he letter over to his wife. It was a rough piece of
paper; at the top was scrawled the outline of a coffin underneath which
was written:

"MR. MULREADY: Sir, this is to give you warning that if you uses the new
machinery you are a dead man. You have been a marked man for a long
time for your tyrannical ways, but as long as you didn't get the new
machinery we let you live; but we has come to the end of it now; the day
as you turns on steam we burns your mill to the ground and shoots you,
so now you knows it."

At the bottom of this was signed the words "Captain Lud."

"Oh! William," Mrs. Mulready cried, "you will never do it! You will
never risk your life at the hands of these terrible people!"

All the thin veneer of politeness was cracked by this blow, and Mr.
Mulready said sullenly:

"Nice thing indeed; after I have married to get this money, and then not
to be able to use it!"

His wife gave a little cry.

"It's a shame to say so," Charlie burst out sturdily.

Mr. Mulready's passion found a vent. He leaped up and seized the boy by
the collar and boxed his ears with all his force.

In an instant the fury which had been smoldering in Ned's breast for
months found a vent. He leaped to his feet and struck Mr. Mulready a
blow between the eyes which sent him staggering back against the wall;
then he caught up the poker. The manufacturer with a snarl like that of
an angry wild beast was about to rush at him, but Ned's attitude as he
stood, poker in hand, checked him.

"Stand back," Ned said threateningly, "or I will strike you. You coward
and bully; for months I have put up with your tyrannizing over Charlie
and Lucy, but touch either of them again if you dare. You think that you
are stronger than I am--so you are ever so much; but you lay a finger
on them or on me, and I warn you, if I wait a month for an opportunity I
will pay you for it, if you kill me afterward."

Mrs. Mulready's screams had by this time brought the servants into the
room, and they stood astonished at the spectacle.

Lucy crying bitterly had run to Ned and thrown her arms round him,
begging him to be quiet. Charlie, hardly recovered from the heavy blows
he had received, was crying too. Mr. Mulready as pale as death was
glaring at Ned, while his wife had thrown herself between them. Mr.
Mulready was the first to recover himself.

"This is a nice spectacle," he said to the servants. "You see that boy
has attacked me with the poker and migh