CHAPTER V.

      HOLLOW’S COTTAGE.

      Moore’s good spirits were still with him when he rose next morning. He and Joe Scott had both spent the night in the mill, availing themselves of certain sleeping accommodations producible from recesses in the front and back counting-houses. The master, always an early riser, was up somewhat sooner even than usual. He awoke his man by singing a French song as he made his toilet.

      “Ye’re not custen dahn, then, maister?” cried Joe.

      “Not a stiver, mon garçon — which means, my lad. Get up, and we’ll take a turn through the mill before the hands come in, and I’ll explain my future plans. We’ll have the machinery yet, Joseph. You never heard of Bruce, perhaps?”

      “And th’ arrand (spider)? Yes, but I hev. I’ve read th’ history o’ Scotland, and happen knaw as mich on’t as ye; and I understand ye to mean to say ye’ll persevere.”

      “I do.”

      “Is there mony o’ your mak’ i’ your country?” inquired Joe, as he folded up his temporary bed, and put it away.

      “In my country! Which is my country?”

      “Why, France — isn’t it?”

      “Not it, indeed! The circumstance of the French having seized Antwerp, where I was born, does not make me a Frenchman.”

      “Holland, then?”

      “I am not a Dutchman. Now you are confounding Antwerp with Amsterdam.”

      “Flanders?”

      “I scorn the insinuation, Joe! I a Flamand! Have I a Flemish face — the clumsy nose standing out, the mean forehead falling back, the pale blue eyes ‘à fleur de tête’? Am I all body and no legs, like a Flamand? But you don’t know what they are like, those Netherlanders. Joe, I’m an Anversois. My mother was an Anversoise, though she came of French lineage, which is the reason I speak French.”

      “But your father war Yorkshire, which maks ye a bit Yorkshire too; and onybody may see ye’re akin to us, ye’re so keen o’ making brass, and getting forrards.”

      “Joe, you’re an impudent dog; but I’ve always been accustomed to a boorish sort of insolence from my youth up. The ‘classe ouvrière’ — that is, the working people in Belgium — bear themselves brutally towards their employers; and by brutally, Joe, I mean brutalement — which, perhaps, when properly translated, should be roughly.”

      “We allus speak our minds i’ this country; and them young parsons and grand folk fro’ London is shocked at wer ‘incivility;’ and we like weel enough to gi’e ‘em summat to be shocked at, ‘cause it’s sport to us to watch ‘em turn up the whites o’ their een, and spreed out their bits o’ hands, like as they’re flayed wi’ bogards, and then to hear ‘em say, nipping off their words short like, ‘Dear! dear! Whet seveges! How very corse!’”

      “You are savages, Joe. You don’t suppose you’re civilized, do you?”

      “Middling, middling, maister. I reckon ‘at us manufacturing lads i’ th’ north is a deal more intelligent, and knaws a deal more nor th’ farming folk i’ th’ south. Trade sharpens wer wits; and them that’s mechanics like me is forced to think. Ye know, what wi’ looking after machinery and sich like, I’ve getten into that 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