who was ready to
carry out his threat if driven to it. I shouldn't be, I tell you fairly.
If the mill is attacked I shall fight and shall take my chance of being
shot, but I could not blow myself up in cold blood."

"I don't suppose I could have done so either in the old times," Ned said
with a faint smile. "My blood used to be hot enough, a good deal too
hot, but I don't think anything could get it up to boiling point now,
so you see if this thing had to be done at all it must have been in cold
blood."

"By the way, Sankey, I wish you would come over one day next week and
dine with me; there will be no one else there except my daughter."

Ned hastily muttered an excuse.

"Oh, that is all nonsense," Mr. Cartwright said good humoredly; "you are
not afraid of me, and you needn't be afraid of my daughter. She is
only a child of fifteen, and of course takes you at my estimate, and
is disposed to regard you as a remarkable mixture of the martyr and
the hero, and to admire you accordingly. Pooh, pooh, lad! you can't be
living like a hermit all your life; and at any rate if you make up
your mind to have but a few friends you must be all the closer and more
intimate with them. I know you dine with Porson and Green, and I am not
going to let you keep me at arm's length; you must come, or else I shall
be seriously offended."

So Ned had no resource left him, and had to consent to dine at
Liversedge. Once there he often repeated the visit. With the kind and
hearty manufacturer he was perfectly at home, and although at first he
was uncomfortable with his daughter he gradually became at his ease
with her, especially after she had driven over with her father to make
friends with Lucy, and, again, a short time afterward, to carry her
away for a week's visit at Liversedge. For this Ned was really grateful.
Lucy's life had been a very dull one. She had no friends of her own
age in Marsden, for naturally at the time of Mr. Mulready's death all
intimacy with the few acquaintances they had in the place had been
broken off, for few cared that their children should associate with a
family among whom such a terrible tragedy had taken place.

Charlie was better off, for he had his friends at school, and the boys
at Porson's believed in Ned's innocence as a point of honor. In the
first place, it would have been something like a reflection upon the
whole school to admit the possibility of its first boy being a murderer;
in the second, Ne