enuous operators, lining the long walls
at regular intervals, six a side, were at it with might and main
(payment by results being the rule in this department of industry), and
attendant boys strolled up and down, picking the fleeces from the floor
and carrying them to the sorter's table. One was the tar-boy, whose
business it was to dab a brushful of tar upon any scarlet patch
appearing upon a white under-coat where the shears had clipped too
close. The sorter or classer stood behind his long table, above and at
right angles to the lines of sheep-pens and shearers. Near him on
either hand were racks like narrow loose-boxes, built against the
walls; behind him the hydraulic press cranked and creaked as its
attendants fed and manipulated it, and the great bales, that others
were sewing up, weighing, and branding, were mounting high in the
transepts of the building--the two arms of the capital T. The air was
thick with woolly particles and the smell of sheep; the floor was dark
and slippery, and everything one touched humid with the impalpable
grease of the silky fleeces circulating all about the shed. Strict,
downright, dirty business was the order of the day.

The manager--Jim Urquhart, grey-bearded, in a battered felt hat and a
slouchy old tweed suit--stood by the sorter's table, his wide-ranging,
vigilant eye suddenly fixed upon it. As each fleece was brought up,
shaken out, trimmed, tested with thumb and finger, rolled into a light
bundle, inside out, and flung into one or another of the adjacent
racks, he followed the process as if it were something new to him. The
shade of difference in the texture of the staple of one fleece as
compared with another appeared of more concern to him than the absolute
difference, which seemed to shout for notice, between Deborah Dalzell
and the other features of the scene.

A snowy, lacy petticoat all but swept the greasy floor. An equally
spotless skirt, fresh from the laundry, gathered up in one strong
pendant hand, gleamed like light against its background of greasy
woodwork and greasy wool. The majestic figure of the lady of Redford
advanced towards him. Her lord strolled behind her. Often--but not for
many a long day--had the vision of her beautiful face come to Jim in
this fashion, a radiance upon prosaic business that it was not allowed
to interfere with; now, for the first time, his eye avoided, his heart
shrank from recognising it.

Then he lifted his gaze at last, for sh