Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

“Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on Stilbro’ Moor, and your men are lying bound hand and foot in a ditch by the roadside. Take this as a warning from men that are starving, and have starving wives and children to go home to when they have done this deed. If you get new machines, or if you otherwise go on as you have done, you shall hear from us again. Beware!”

“Hear from you again? Yes, I’ll hear from you again, and you shall hear from me. I’ll speak to you directly. On Stilbro’ Moor you shall hear from me in a moment.”

Having led the wagons within the gates, he hastened towards the cottage. Opening the door, he spoke a few words quickly but quietly to two females who ran to meet him in the passage. He calmed the seeming alarm of one by a brief palliative account of what had taken place; to the other he said, “Go into the mill, Sarah⁠—there is the key⁠—and ring the mill-bell as loud as you can. Afterwards you will get another lantern and help me to light up the front.”

Returning to his horses, he unharnessed, fed, and stabled them with equal speed and care, pausing occasionally, while so occupied, as if to listen for the mill-bell. It clanged out presently, with irregular but loud and alarming din. The hurried, agitated peal seemed more urgent than if the summons had been steadily given by a practised hand. On that still night, at that unusual hour, it was heard a long way round. The guests in the kitchen of the Redhouse were startled by the clamour, and declaring that “there must be summat more nor common to do at Hollow’s Miln,” they called for lanterns, and hurried to the spot in a body. And scarcely had they thronged into the yard with their gleaming lights, when the tramp of horses was heard, and a little man in a shovel hat, sitting erect on the back of a shaggy pony, “rode lightly in,” followed by an aide-de-camp mounted on a larger steed.

Mr. Moore, meantime, after stabling his dray-horses, had saddled his hackney, and with the aid of Sarah, the servant, lit up his mill, whose wide and long front now glared one great illumination, throwing a sufficient light on the yard to obviate all fear of confusion arising from obscurity. Already a deep hum of voices became audible. Mr. Malone had at length issued from the countinghouse, previously taking the precaution to dip his head and face in the stone water-jug; and this precaution, together with the sudden alarm, had nearly restored to him the possession of those senses which the punch had partially scattered. He stood with his hat on the back of his head, and his shillelah grasped in his dexter fist, answering much at random the questions of the newly-arrived party from the Redhouse. Mr. Moore now appeared, and was immediately confronted by the shovel hat and the shaggy pony.

“Well, Moore, what is your business with us? I thought you would want us tonight⁠—me and the hetman here (patting his pony’s neck), and Tom and his charger. When I heard your mill-bell I could sit still no longer, so I left Boultby to finish his supper alone. But where is the enemy? I do not see a mask or a smutted face present; and there is not a pane of glass broken in your windows. Have you had an attack, or do you expect one?”

“Oh, not at all! I have neither had one nor expect one,” answered Moore coolly. “I only ordered the bell to be rung because I want two or three neighbours to stay here in the Hollow while I and a couple or so more go over to Stilbro’ Moor.”

“To Stilbro’ Moor! What to do? To meet the wagons?”

“The wagons are come home an hour ago.”

“Then all’s right. What more would you have?”

“They came home empty; and Joe Scott and company are left on the moor, and so are the frames. Read that scrawl.”

Mr. Helstone received and perused the document of which the contents have before been given.

“Hum! They’ve only served you as they serve others. But, however, the poor fellows in the ditch will be expecting help with some impatience. This is a wet night for such a berth. I and Tom will go with you. Malone may stay behind and take care of the mill. What is the matter with him? His eyes seem starting out of his head.”

“He has been eating a mutton chop.”

“Indeed!⁠—Peter Augustus, be on your guard. Eat no more mutton chops tonight. You are left here in command of these premises⁠—an honourable post!”

“Is anybody to stay with me?”

“As many of the present assemblage as choose.⁠—My lads, how many of you will remain here, and how many will go a little way with me and Mr. Moore on the Stilbro’ road, to meet some men who have been waylaid and assaulted by frame-breakers?”

The small number of three volunteered to go; the rest preferred staying behind. As Mr. Moore mounted his horse, the rector asked him in a low voice whether he had locked up the mutton chops, so that Peter Augustus could not get at them? The manufacturer nodded an affirmative, and the rescue-party set out.

Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within as on the state of things without and around us. I make this trite remark, because I happen to know that Messrs. Helstone and Moore trotted forth from the mill-yard gates, at the head of their very small company, in the best possible spirits. When a ray from a lantern (the three pedestrians of the party carried each one) fell on Mr. Moore’s face, you could see an unusual, because a lively, spark dancing in his eyes, and a newfound vivacity mantling on his dark physiognomy; and when the rector’s visage was illuminated, his