aid a word of reprimand,
which was a little more sharply repeated by Joe Scott when the lingerers
reached the work-rooms. Neither master nor overlooker spoke savagely.
They were not savage men either of them, though it appeared both were
rigid, for they fined a delinquent who came considerably too late. Mr.
Moore made him pay his penny down ere he entered, and informed him that
the next repetition of the fault would cost him twopence.

Rules, no doubt, are necessary in such cases, and coarse and cruel
masters will make coarse and cruel rules, which, at the time we treat of
at least, they used sometimes to enforce tyrannically; but though I
describe imperfect characters (every character in this book will be
found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in
the model line), I have not undertaken to handle degraded or utterly
infamous ones. Child-torturers, slave masters and drivers, I consign to
the hands of jailers. The novelist may be excused from sullying his page
with the record of their deeds.

Instead, then, of harrowing up my reader's soul and delighting his organ
of wonder with effective descriptions of stripes and scourgings, I am
happy to be able to inform him that neither Mr. Moore nor his overlooker
ever struck a child in their mill. Joe had, indeed, once very severely
flogged a son of his own for telling a lie and persisting in it; but,
like his employer, he was too phlegmatic, too calm, as well as too
reasonable a man, to make corporal chastisement other than the exception
to his treatment of the young.

Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his
warehouse till the sickly dawn strengthened into day. The sun even
rose--at least a white disc, clear, tintless, and almost chill-looking
as ice, peeped over the dark crest of a hill, changed to silver the
livid edge of the cloud above it, and looked solemnly down the whole
length of the den, or narrow dale, to whose strait bounds we are at
present limited. It was eight o'clock; the mill lights were all
extinguished; the signal was given for breakfast; the children, released
for half an hour from toil, betook themselves to the little tin cans
which held their coffee, and to the small baskets which contained their
allowance of bread. Let us hope they have enough to eat; it would be a
pity were it otherwise.

And now at last Mr. Moore quitted the mill-yard, and bent his steps to
his dwelling-house. It was only a short d