d to rouse
them. He liked to force them to betray a certain fear, which made them
alike falter in resolve and recoil in action--the fear, simply, of
assassination. This, indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered
every manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. Helstone
alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew well he might be shot.
He knew there was risk; but such death had for his nerves no terrors. It
would have been his chosen, might he have had a choice.

Moore likewise knew his danger. The result was an unquenchable scorn of
the quarter whence such danger was to be apprehended. The consciousness
that he hunted assassins was the spur in his high-mettled temper's
flank. As for fear, he was too proud, too hard-natured (if you will),
too phlegmatic a man to fear. Many a time he rode belated over the
moors, moonlit or moonless as the case might be, with feelings far more
elate, faculties far better refreshed, than when safety and stagnation
environed him in the counting-house. Four was the number of the leaders
to be accounted for. Two, in the course of a fortnight, were brought to
bay near Stilbro'; the remaining two it was necessary to seek farther
off. Their haunts were supposed to lie near Birmingham.

Meantime the clothier did not neglect his battered mill. Its reparation
was esteemed a light task, carpenters' and glaziers' work alone being
needed. The rioters not having succeeded in effecting an entrance, his
grim metal darlings--the machines--had escaped damage.

Whether during this busy life--whether while stern justice and exacting
business claimed his energies and harassed his thoughts--he now and then
gave one moment, dedicated one effort, to keep alive gentler fires than
those which smoulder in the fane of Nemesis, it was not easy to
discover. He seldom went near Fieldhead; if he did, his visits were
brief. If he called at the rectory, it was only to hold conferences with
the rector in his study. He maintained his rigid course very steadily.
Meantime the history of the year continued troubled. There was no lull
in the tempest of war; her long hurricane still swept the Continent.
There was not the faintest sign of serene weather, no opening amid "the
clouds of battle-dust and smoke," no fall of pure dews genial to the
olive, no cessation of the red rain which nourishes the baleful and
glorious laurel. Meantime, Ruin had her sappers and miners at work under
Moore's feet, and wh