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172 this room empty because you did not care to be at close quarters with every man. Now"

"Get thee in, my lad," he interrupted, dryly. "It suits me well enow to ha' you nigh me. Never fear that."

The only outward change made was in his manner. He went about his labor with a deadly persistence. He came early and went home late. The simplest "hand" saw that some powerful force was at work. He was silent and harder in his rule of those under him. He made closer bargains and more daring plans. Men who had been his rivals began to have a kind of fear of him. All he took in hand throve.

"He is a wonderful fellow," said Ffrench to his friends. "Wonderful—wonderful!"

Even the friends in question who were, some of them, county magnates of great dignity, began to find their opinion of the man shaken. In these days there was actually nothing to complain of. The simple little country woman reigned in his household. She attended the Broxton Chapel and dispensed her innocent charities on all sides. Finally a dowager of high degree (the patroness of a charitable society), made the bold move of calling upon her for a subscription.

"It weren't as hard to talk to her, Jem, as I'd have thought," said Mrs. Haworth afterward. "She began to tell me about the poor women as suffers so, an' somehow I forgot about her bein' so grand. I couldn't think of nothin' but the poor creturs an' their pain, an' when I come to sign my name my 'and trembled so an' my eyes was that full I couldn't hardly tell what I'd put down. To think of them poor things"

"How much did you give her?" asked Haworth.

"I give her ten pound, my dear, an'"