way that when I see an effect, I look straight out for a cause, and I oft lig hold on’t to purpose; and then I like reading, and I’m curious to knaw what them that reckons to govern us aims to do for us and wi’ us; and there’s many ’cuter nor me; there’s many a one amang them greasy chaps ’at smells o’ oil, and amang them dyers wi’ blue and black skins, that has a long head, and that can tell what a fooil of a law is, as well as ye or old Yorke, and a deal better nor soft uns like Christopher Sykes o’ Whinbury, and greet hectoring nowts like yond’ Irish Peter, Helstone’s curate.’

‘You think yourself a clever fellow, I know, Scott.’

‘Ay! I’m fairish; I can tell cheese fro’ chalk, and I’m varry weel aware that I’ve improved sich opportunities as I have had, a deal better nor some ’at reckons to be aboon me; but there’s thousands i’ Yorkshire that’s as good as me, and a two-three that’s better.’

‘You’re a great man—you’re a sublime fellow; but you’re a prig, a conceited noodle with it all, Joe! You need not to think that because you’ve picked up a little knowledge of practical mathematics, and because you have found some scantling of the elements of chemistry at the bottom of a dyeing vat, that therefore you’re a neglected man of science; and you need not to suppose that because the course of trade does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are sometimes short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong. And, moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let me tell you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because I know so well that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breathes, vice and virtue are ever found blended, in smaller or greater proportions, and that the proportion is not determined by station. I have seen villains who were rich, and I have seen villains who were poor, and I have seen villains who were neither rich nor poor, but who had realized Agar’s wish, and lived in fair and modest competency. The clock is going to strike six; away with you, Joe, and ring the mill-bell.’

It was now the middle of the month of February; by six o’clock, therefore, dawn was just beginning to steal on night, to penetrate with a pale ray its brown obscurity, and give a demi-translucence to its opaque shadows. Pale enough that ray was on this particular morning; no colour tinged the east, no flush warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted, what a wan glance she flung along the hills, you would have thought the sun’s fire quenched in last night’s floods. The breath of this morning was chill as its aspect; a raw wind stirred the mass of night-cloud, and showed, as it slowly rose—leaving a colourless, silver-gleaming ring all round the horizon—not blue sky, but a stratum of paler vapour beyond. It had ceased to rain, but the earth was sodden, and the pools and rivulets were full.

The mill windows were alight, the bell still rung loud, and now the little children came running in, in too great a hurry, let us hope, to feel very much nipped by the inclement air. And, indeed, by contrast, perhaps the morning appeared rather favourable to them than otherwise, for they had often come to their work that winter through snowstorms, through heavy rain, through hard frost.

Mr. Moore stood at the entrance to watch them pass. He counted them as they went by. To those who came rather late he said a word of reprimand, which was a little more sharply repeated by Joe Scott when the lingerers reached the workrooms. 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