s power of
control. Pah! it was a dream of Faust's; he, too, had his Margaret; he
fell, through that love.

He went on slowly to the mill. If the name or the words woke a subtile
remorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure. Whether they
should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, to taunt the
man, only the future could tell.

Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting at
every turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one of those
men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: saw the true
worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark of self-esteem:
despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when
he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but
success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the
beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their
tambourines up to him.

The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over the
square. It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained to
keep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, he
heard voices, and turned aside to examine. The management was not strict,
and in case of a fire the mill was not insured: like Knowles's
carelessness.

It was Lois and her father,--Joe Yare being feeder that night. They were
in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,--a very comfortable place
that stormy night. Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open,
and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into
the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud
without. Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of
a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular
supper for her father,--down on her knees before the red coals, turning
something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of
juicy, hungry smell.

The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting
some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He had grown
old, as Polston said,--Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking
cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois,
of course. She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and
then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk,
brown, flaky slices of Virgin