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f your life to stir up dissension. You no more sympathize with the poor who are in distress than you sympathize with me. You incite them to outrage for bad purposes of your own; so does the individual called Noah of Tim's. You two are restless, meddling, impudent scoundrels, whose chief motive-principle is a selfish ambition, as dangerous as it is puerile. The persons behind you are some of them honest though misguided men; but you two I count altogether bad." Barraclough was going to speak. "Silence! You have had your say, and now I will have mine. As to being dictated to by you, or any Jack, Jem, or Jonathan on earth, I shall not suffer it for a moment. You desire me to quit the country; you request me to part with my machinery. In case I refuse, you threaten me. I _do_ refuse--point-blank! Here I stay, and by this mill I stand, and into it will I convey the best machinery inventors can furnish. What will you do? The utmost you _can_ do--and this you will never _dare_ to do--is to burn down my mill, destroy its contents, and shoot me. What then? Suppose that building was a ruin and I was a corpse--what then, you lads behind these two scamps? Would that stop invention or exhaust science? Not for the fraction of a second of time! Another and better gig-mill would rise on the ruins of this, and perhaps a more enterprising owner come in my place. Hear me! I'll make my cloth as I please, and according to the best lights I have. In its manufacture I will employ what means I choose. Whoever, after hearing this, shall dare to interfere with me may just take the consequences. An example shall prove I'm in earnest." He whistled shrill and loud. Sugden, his staff and warrant, came on the scene. Moore turned sharply to Barraclough. "You were at Stilbro'," said he; "I have proof of that. You were on the moor, you wore a mask, you knocked down one of my men with your own hand--you! a preacher of the gospel!--Sugden, arrest him!" Moses was captured. There was a cry and a rush to rescue, but the right hand which all this while had lain hidden in Moore's breast, reappearing, held out a pistol. "Both barrels are loaded," said he. "I'm quite determined! Keep off!" Stepping backwards, facing the foe as he went, he guarded his prey to the counting-house. He ordered Joe Scott to pass in with Sugden and the prisoner, and to bolt the door inside. For himself, he walked backwards and forwards along the front of the mill, lookin
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