account.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEVEN.

"Take another impress, James," said Darius. And when he saw Edwin,
instead of asking the youth what he was wasting his time there for, he
good-humouredly added: "Just watch this, my lad." Darius was pleased
with himself, his men, and his acquisition. He was in one of his moods
when he could charm; he was jolly, and he held up his chin. Two days
before, so interested had he been in the Demy Columbian, he had actually
gone through a bilious attack while scarcely noticing it! And now the
whole complex operation had been brought to a triumphant conclusion.

Big James inserted the sheet of paper, with gentle and fine movements.
The journeyman turned the handle, and the bed of the machine slid
horizontally forward in frictionless, stately silence. And then Big
James seized the lever with his hairy arm bared to the elbow, and pulled
it over. The delicate process was done with minute and level
exactitude; adjusted to the thirty-second of an inch, the great masses
of metal had brought the paper and the type together and separated them
again. In another moment Big James drew out the sheet, and the three
men inspected it, each leaning over it. A perfect impression!

"Well," said Darius, glowing, "we've had a bit o' luck in getting that
up! Never had less trouble! Shows we can do better without those
Foundry chaps than with 'em! James, ye can have a quart brought in, if
ye'n a mind, but I won't have them apprentices drinking! No, I won't!
Mrs Nixon'll give 'em some nettle-beer if they fancy it."

He was benignant. The inauguration of a new machine deserved solemn
recognition, especially on a hot day. It was an event.

"An infant in arms could turn this here," murmured the journeyman,
toying with the handle that moved the bed. It was an exaggeration, but
an excusable, poetical exaggeration.

Big James wiped his wrists on his apron.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EIGHT.

Then there was a queer sound of cracking somewhere, vague, faint, and
yet formidable. Darius was standing between the machines and the
dismantled window, his back to the latter. Big James and the journeyman
rushed instinctively from the centre of the floor towards him. In a
second the journeyman was on the window sill.

"What art doing?" Darius demanded roughly; but there was no sincerity
in his voi