s, even if these should involve the slaying of a near
relation proved to have turned traitor to the society.

Hitherto no very marked success had attended its doings. There had been
isolated riots in many places; mills had been burned, and machinery
broken. But the members looked forward to better things. So far their
only successes had been obtained by threats rather than deeds, for many
manufacturers had been deterred from adopting the new machinery by the
receipt of threatening letters signed "King Lud," saying that their
factories would be burned and themselves shot should they venture upon
altering their machinery.

The organ of communication between the members of the society at Varley
and those in other villages was the blacksmith, or as he preferred to be
called, the minister, John Stukeley, who on weekdays worked at the forge
next door to the "Spotted Dog," and on Sundays held services in "Little
Bethel"--a tiny meeting house standing back from the road.

Had John Stukeley been busier during the week he would have had less
time to devote to the cause of "King Lud;" but for many hours a day
his fire was banked up, for except to make repairs in any of the frames
which had got out of order, or to put on a shoe which a horse had cast
on his way up the hill from Marsden, there was but little employment for
him.

The man was not a Yorkshireman by birth, but came from Liverpool, and
his small, spare figure contrasted strongly with those of the tall,
square built Yorkshiremen, among whom he lived.

He was a good workman, but his nervous irritability, his self assertion,
and impatience of orders had lost him so many places that he had finally
determined to become his own master, and, coming into a few pounds at
the death of his father, had wandered away from the great towns, until
finding in Varley a village without a smith, he had established himself
there, and having adopted the grievances of the men as his own, had
speedily become a leading figure among them.

A short time after his arrival the old man who had officiated at Little
Bethel had died, and Stukeley, who had from the first taken a prominent
part in the service, and who possessed the faculty of fluent speech to a
degree rare among the Yorkshiremen, was installed as his successor, and
soon filled Little Bethel as it had never been filled before. In
his predecessor's time, small as the meeting house was, it had been
comparatively empty; two or three men