en there now if I hadn't followed my man to the
wars."

"Where are you going, Master Ned?" she asked as the boy, having finished
his dinner, ran to the high cupboard at the end of the passage near the
kitchen to get his fishing rod.

"I am going out fishing, Abijah."

"Not by yourself, I hope?"

"No; another fellow is going with me. We are going up into the hills."

"Don't ye go too far, Master Ned. They say the croppers are drilling on
the moors, and it were bad for ye if you fell in with them."

"They wouldn't hurt me if I did."

"I don't suppose they would," the nurse said, "but there is never no
saying. Poor fellows! they're druv well nigh out of their senses with
the bad times. What with the machines, and the low price of labor, and
the high price of bread, they are having a terrible time of it. And no
wonder that we hear of frame breaking in Nottingham, and Lancashire, and
other places. How men can be wicked enough to make machines, to take the
bread out of poor men's mouths, beats me altogether."

"Father says the machinery will do good in the long run, Abijah--that it
will largely increase trade, and so give employment to a great many
more people than at present. But it certainly is hard on those who have
learned to work in one way to see their living taken away from them."

"Hard!" the nurse said. "I should say it were hard. I know the croppers,
for there were a score of them in my village, and a rough, wild lot
they were. They worked hard and they drank hard, and the girl as chose
a cropper for a husband was reckoned to have made a bad match of it; but
they are determined fellows, and you will see they won't have the bread
taken out of their mouths without making a fight for it."

"That may be," Ned said, "for every one gives them the name of a rough
lot; but I must talk to you about it another time, Abijah, I have got
to be off;" and having now found his fishing rod, his box of bait, his
paper of books, and a basket to bring home the fish he intended to get,
Ned ran off at full speed toward the school.

As Abijah Wolf had said, the croppers of the West Riding were a rough
set. Their occupation consisted in shearing or cropping the wool on the
face of cloths. They used a large pair of shears, which were so set that
one blade went under the cloth while the other worked on its upper face,
mowing the fibers and ends of the wool to a smooth, even surface. The
work was hard and required considerable ski