feeling in better spirits than he had been from the day when he
first heard of his mother's engagement to Mr. Mulready, walked briskly
down to Marsden.

For a time matters went on quietly. Few words were exchanged between
Ned and Mr. Mulready; and although the latter could not but have noticed
that Ned was brighter and more cheerful in his talk, he was brooding
over his own trouble, and paid but little heed to it.

The time was fast approaching when he could no longer go on as at
present. The competition with the mills using the new machinery was
gradually crushing him, and it was necessary for him to come to a
determination either to pluck up heart and to use his new machines, or
to close his mill.

At last he determined to take the former course and to defy King Lud.
Other manufacturers used steam, and why should not he? It was annoying
to him in the extreme that his friends and acquaintances, knowing that
he had fitted the mill with the new plant, were always asking him why he
did not use it.

A sort of uneasy consciousness that he was regarded by his townsmen as a
coward was constantly haunting him. He knew in his heart that his danger
was greater than that of others, because he could not rely on his men.
Other masters had armed their hands, and had turned their factories into
strong places, some of them even getting down cannon for their defense:
for, as a rule, the hands employed with the new machinery had no
objection to it, for they were able to earn larger wages with less
bodily toil than before.

The hostility was among the hands thrown out of employment, or who found
that they could now no longer make a living by the looms which they
worked in their own homes. Hitherto Mr. Mulready had cared nothing for
the goodwill of his hands. He had simply regarded them as machines
from whom the greatest amount of work was to be obtained at the lowest
possible price. They might grumble and curse him beneath their breaths;
they might call him a tyrant behind his back, for this he cared nothing:
but he felt now that it would have been better had their relations
been different: for then he could have trusted them to do their best in
defense of the mill.

Having once determined upon defying King Lud, Mr. Mulready went before
the magistrates, and laying before them the threatening letters he had
received, for the first had been followed by many others, he asked them
to send for a company of infantry, as he was going to