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 inquired Malone. “Helstone seems to think it will.”

“I only wish the machines—the frames were safe here, and lodged within the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy the framebreakers; let them only pay me a visit, and take the consequences: my mill is my castle.”

“One despises such low scoundrels,” observed Malone, in a profound vein of reflection. “I almost wish a party would call upon you to-night; but the road seemed extremely quiet as I came along: I saw nothing astir.”

“You came by the Redhouse?”

“Yes.”

“There would be nothing on that road: it is in the direction of Stilbro’ the risk lies.”

“And you think there is risk?”

“What these fellows have done to others, they may do to me. There is only this difference: most of the manufacturers seem paralyzed when they are attacked. Sykes, for instance, when his dressing-shop was set on fire and burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his tenters and left in shreds in the field, took no steps to discover or punish the miscreants; he gave up as tamely as a rabbit under the jaws of a ferret. Now I, if I know myself, should stand by my trade, my mill, and my machinery.”

“Helstone says these three are your gods; that the ‘Orders in Council’ are with you another name