'But work grew scarce, while bread grew dear,

And wages lessened, too;

For Irish hordes were bidders here,

Our half-paid work to do.'

CORN LAW RHYMES.

Margaret was shown into the drawing-room. It had returned into

its normal state of bag and covering. The windows were half open

because of the heat, and the Venetian blinds covered the

glass,--so that a gray grim light, reflected from the pavement

below, threw all the shadows wrong, and combined with the

green-tinged upper light to make even Margaret's own face, as she

caught it in the mirrors, look ghastly and wan. She sat and

waited; no one came. Every now and then, the wind seemed to bear

the distant multitudinous sound nearer; and yet there was no

wind! It died away into profound stillness between whiles.

Fanny came in at last.

'Mamma will come directly, Miss Hale. She desired me to apologise

to you as it is. Perhaps you know my brother has imported hands

from Ireland, and it has irritated the Milton people

excessively--as if he hadn't a right to get labour where he

could; and the stupid wretches here wouldn't work for him; and

now they've frightened these poor Irish starvelings so with their

threats, that we daren't let them out. You may see them huddled

in that top room in the mill,--and they're to sleep there, to

keep them safe from those brutes, who will neither work nor let

them work. And mamma is seeing about their food, and John is

speaking to them, for some of the women are crying to go back.

Ah! here's mamma!'

Mrs. Thornton came in with a look of black sternness on her face,

which made Margaret feel she had arrived at a bad time to trouble

her with her request. However, it was only in compliance with

Mrs. Thornton's expressed desire, that she would ask for whatever

they might want in the progress of her mother's illness. Mrs.

Thornton's brow contracted, and her mouth grew set, while

Margaret spoke with gentle modesty of her mother's restlessness,

and Dr. Donaldson's wish that she should have the relief of a

water-bed. She ceased. Mrs. Thornton did not reply immediately.

Then she started up and exclaimed-

'They're at the gates! Call John, Fanny,--call him in from the

mill! They're at the gates! They'll batter them in! Call John, I

say!' And simultaneously, the gathering tramp--to which she had been

listening, instead of heeding Margaret's words--was heard just

right outside the wall, and an increasing din of angry voices

raged behind the wooden barrier, which shook as if the unseen

maddened crowd made battering-rams of their bodies, and retreated

a short space only to come with more united steady impetus

against it, till their great beats made the strong gates quiver,

like reeds before the wind. The women gathered round the windows,

fascinated to look on the scene which terrified them. Mrs.

Thornton, the women-servants, Margaret,--all were there. Fanny

had returned, screaming up-stairs as if pursued at every step,

and had thrown herself in hysterical sobbing on the sofa. Mrs.

Thornton watched for her son, who was still in the mill. He came

out, looked up at them--the pale cluster of faces--and smiled

good courage to them, before he locked the factory-door. Then he

called to one of the women to come down and undo his own door,

which Fanny had fastened behind her in her mad flight. Mrs.

Thornton herself went. And the sound of his well-known and

commanding voice, seemed to have been like the taste of blood to

the infuriated multitude outside. Hitherto they had been

voiceless, wordless, needing all their breath for their

hard-labouring efforts to break down the gates. But now, hearing

him speak inside, they set up such a fierce unearthly groan, that

even Mrs. Thornton was white with fear as she preceded him into

the room. He came in a little flushed, but his eyes gleaming, as

in answer to the trumpet-call of danger, and with a proud look of

defiance on his face, that made him a noble, if not a handsome

man. Margaret had always dreaded lest her courage should fail her

in any emergency, and she should be proved to be, what she

dreaded lest she was--a coward. But now, in this real great time

of reasonable fear and nearness of terror, she forgot herself,

and felt only an intense sympathy--intense to painfulness--in the

interests of the moment.




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