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320 sound so faint and indistinct that his disbelief in its reality was immediate; but he got up, taking his lantern with him, and went out to look at the entrance passage. It was empty and dark, and the door was shut and locked as he had left it. He went back to his work little disturbed. He had not really expected to find the traces of any presence in the place, but he had felt it best to make the matter safe.

Perhaps the fact that once or twice on other nights the same light, indefinite sound fell upon his ear again, made him feel rather more secure than otherwise. Having examined the place again and with the same result, it troubled him no more. He set it down to some ordinary material cause.

After his first visit Haworth came into his room often. Why he came Murdoch did not understand very clearly. He did not come to talk; sometimes he scarcely spoke at all. He was moody and abstracted. He went about the place wearing a hard and reckless look, utterly unlike any roughness and hardness he had shown before. The hands who had cared the least for his not altogether ill-natured tempests in days gone by shrank or were restive before him now. He drove all before him or passed through the rooms sullenly. It was plain to see that he was not the man he had been—that he had even lost strength, and was suddenly worn and broken, though neither flesh nor color had failed him.

Among those who had made a lion of him he was more popular than ever. The fact that he had held out against ill luck when so many had gone down, was constantly quoted. The strikes which had kept up an uneven but prolonged struggle had been the ruin of many a manufacturer who had thought he could battle any storm.