‘You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance of a row, I would go; but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never pretend to understand; and, for the sake of his sweet company only, I would not stir a step.’

‘But there is a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take place—of which, indeed, I see no signs —yet it is unlikely this night will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have the new machinery, and he expects two waggon-loads of frames and shears from Stilbro’ this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men, are gone to fetch them.’

‘They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir.’

‘Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody: some one, however, he must have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were the darling of the neighbourhood, or—being, as he is, its detestation—bore a “charmed life,” as they say in tale-books. He takes no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage—shot, one in his own house and the other on the moor.’

‘But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too,’ interposed Mr. Sweeting; ‘and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other day.’

‘What did you hear, Davy?’

‘You know Mike Hartley, sir?’

‘The Antinomian weaver. Yes.’

‘When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally winds up by a visit to Nunnely Vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting in outer darkness.’

‘Well, that has nothing to do with Moore.’

‘Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller, sir.’

‘I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide. Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, “the revenger of blood has obtained satisfaction.” The fellow exults strangely in murder done on crowned heads, or on any head for political reasons. I have already heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore: is that what you allude to, Sweeting?’

‘You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal hatred of Moore; Mike says he even likes to talk to him, and run after him, but he has a hankering that Moore should be made an example of. He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike Hartley in his right mind, do you think sir?’ inquired Sweeting simply.

‘Can’t tell, Davy: he may be crazed or he may be only crafty—or, perhaps, a little of both.’

‘He talks of seeing visions, sir.’

‘Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was going to bed, last Friday night, to describe one that had been revealed to him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon.’

‘Tell it, sir—what was it?’ urged Sweeting.