with gunpowder
under their very feet. The whole country for miles and miles round is
smoking and steaming, and clattering, and hammering; people are
shovelling and poking, and digging, and blasting, and laying waste
with fire and water even into the entrails of the earth; not a forest
finds mercy; there are glass-houses, and alum works, and copper mines,
and bleaching-grounds, and spinning-jennies: look you, this must bring
mishap or goodhap to the man who sets such a sight of things a-going;
it can't all end in nothing. Where there are no human beings, there
dwell the silent spirits of the mountains and woods: but if they are
too much squeezed,--for when not prest for room and left in peace they
will live on good terms with man and beast,--but when one elbows them
too close, and into their very ribs, they grow pettish and
mischievous: then come deaths, earthquakes, floods, conflagrations,
landslips, and all the other things they bring to pass; or else you
must put a stiff yoke on them, and then they will serve you indeed,
but against the grain, and the more toll they have to pay to anybody,
the worse friends are they to him at the last. Now this, young master,
is what you are pleased to call fortune."

The dispute would probably have lasted some time longer, unless an
elderly man had now approacht them, whom Edward, whenever he was able,
was glad to avoid. On this occasion however Eleazar came too quickly
upon him, and besides had so much business to talk over, that the head
overseer was compelled to stay and hear what the manager of the looms
had to say. Eleazar was a little sickly man, self-willed and sullen,
even more so than his master, the old man of the mountain, as Conrad,
after the custom of the neighbourhood, had called him.

"I heard yesterday," said Eleazar, "of a carriage that was to stop the
night in the next town; as I went by I told William of it; and now the
fellow, who seemed aghast at the tidings, is up and off. My master
will as usual have to endure loss and vexation from these vagabond
knaves, whom he is so fond of trusting before his old tried friends."

His eyes fell on the curious book, he looked into it, and seemed
delighted. "If you like the nonsensical stuff," said Edward, "I will
make you a present of it, in case William, for whom I have bought it,
does not return."

"Thank you, thank you, from my heart!" cried Eleazar, sniggering, as
he lifted his sharp little eyes, and a strange smirkin