ing sacred songs, and chaunts, and a' that, and say
all together from twenty rooms, a hundred times a day, 'Aws ut wuz in th'
beginnin,' uz now awn ever shawl be, worl' wi'out end, Aamen.' It's not
right. I've told Mr. Jackson. Listen now, didn't I tell ye?"

"Then you are a Churchman?"

And the old man wiped his glasses and told me that he was a Churchman,
although an unworthy one, and had been for fifty-four years, come
Michaelmas. Yes, he had always lived here, was born only across the beck
away--his father was gamekeeper for Lord Cardigan, and afterwards agent.
He had been to Haworth many times, although not for ten years. He knew the
Reverend Patrick Bronte well, for the Incumbent from Haworth used to
preach at Keighley once a year, and sometimes twice. Bronte was a fine
man, with a splendid voice for intoning, and very strict about keeping out
all heresies and such. He had a lot of trouble, had Bronte: his wife died
and left him with eight or ten children, all smart, but rather wild. They
gave him a lot of bother, especially the boy. One of the girls married Mr.
Bronte's curate, Mr. Nicholls, a very decent kind of man who comes to
Keighley once a year, and always comes to the factory to ask how things
are going.

Yes, Mr. Nicholls' first wife died years and years ago. She used to write
things--novels; but no one should read novels; novels are stories that are
not so--things that never happened; they tell of folks that never was.

Having no argument to present in way of rebuttal, I shook hands with the
old man and started away. He walked with me to the road to put me on the
right way to Haworth.

Looking back as I reached the corner, I saw four "clarks" watching me
intently from the office windows, and above the roar and jangle of
machinery was borne on the summer breeze the sound of sacred song--shrill
feminine voices:

"Aws ut wuz in th' beginnin', uz now awn ever shawl be, worl' wi'out
end--Aamen!"

* * * * *

As one moves out of Keighley the country becomes stony; the trees are left
behind, and there rises on all sides billow on billow of purple heather.
The way is rough as the Pilgrim's Progress road to Paradise. These
hillside moors are filled with springs that high up form rills, then
brooks, then cascades or "becks," and along the Haworth road, wherever one
of these hurrying, scurrying, dancing becks crosses the highway, there is
a factory devoted to keeping alive the