gh him in the instant's pause before Mrs.
Westmore, responding to his last appeal, said with a graceful eagerness:
"Yes, you must come tonight. I want to hear all you can tell me--and if
there is anything wrong you must show me how I can make it better."

"I'll show her, and Truscomb shan't turn me out for it," was the vow he
passionately registered as the carriage drew up at the office-door of
the main building.

How this impossible result was to be achieved he had no farther time to
consider, for in another moment the rest of the party had entered the
factory with them, and speech was followed up in the roar of the
machinery.

Amherst's zeal for his cause was always quickened by the sight of the
mills in action. He loved the work itself as much as he hated the
conditions under which it was done; and he longed to see on the
operatives' faces something of the ardour that lit up his own when he
entered the work-rooms. It was this passion for machinery that at school
had turned him from his books, at college had drawn him to the courses
least in the line of his destined profession; and it always seized on
him afresh when he was face to face with the monstrous energies of the
mills. It was not only the sense of power that thrilled him--he felt a
beauty in the ordered activity of the whole intricate organism, in the
rhythm of dancing bobbins and revolving cards, the swift continuous
outpour of doublers and ribbon-laps, the steady ripple of the long
ply-frames, the terrible gnashing play of the looms--all these varying
subordinate motions, gathered up into the throb of the great engines
which fed the giant's arteries, and were in turn ruled by the invisible
action of quick thought and obedient hands, always produced in Amherst a
responsive rush of life.

He knew this sensation was too specialized to affect his companions; but
he expected Mrs. Westmore to be all the more alive to the other
side--the dark side of monotonous human toil, of the banquet of flesh
and blood and brain perpetually served up to the monster whose
insatiable jaws the looms so grimly typified. Truscomb, as he had told
her, was a good manager from the profit-taking standpoint. Since it was
profitable to keep the machinery in order, he maintained throughout the
factory a high standard of mechanical supervision, except where one or
two favoured overseers--for Truscomb was given to favoritism--shirked
the duties of their departments. But it was of the es