temperament it must have been inexpressibly galling. Then he
painfully straightened himself. He had in all probability never been
beaten yet, and he had once, so his sister afterward told me, tamed a
native levy of irregular cavalry and commanded them for two years in spite
of the fact that a number of the dusky troopers had sworn to murder him on
opportunity.

"You cannot have the Green Mountain site, and I'll stop this thing yet,"
he said.

The listeners' faces were a study. Indignation, regret, suppressed
sympathy and a determination to maintain their rights, were stamped on
them.

They were Englishman born with a due respect for constituted authority who
had loyally obeyed a leader of their own class, but they had also the
average Englishman's respect for the liberty of the individual, and there
were signs of approval when Lyle spoke again.

"We have every respect for you, Colonel Carrington, and the course we have
been compelled to take is a painful one, but I think there was no avoiding
it," he said. "In regard to the charter, we have kept it faithfully even
when you rather overstrained its meaning. Now we can no longer allow it to
bar all progress, and we have resolved, if in agreement with one clause it
can as I think be done, to entirely remodel it by a unanimous assembly. If
not we will sell our holdings and move out in a body onto Government
land."

Lyle had faced the crisis. There was nothing left but open defiance, and
he did not shrink from it. When he broke off, Carrington, who had listened
with the veins swelling on his forehead, rose suddenly. It was evident
that he had allowed his passion to master him.

"Will you all turn against me, you dividend-hunting traitors?" he
thundered. "You whom I brought here, and spent the best of my life for,
squandering my daughter's patrimony on this colony until she too sets her
will against me. Then listen to me. You shall do none of the things you
say. By heaven, you shall not. There shall never be a factory in my
settlement. In spite of you--I say--you shall not--do--one--of them!"

His voice broke, and his jaw dropped. The hand he had swung up fell to his
side, and I heard a faint cry as he sank limply into his chair. He lay
there with his head on the carved back gazing at his rebellious followers
with glassy eyes.

I do not know who was the first to move, but in a moment I was standing
near his side, and while a confused bustle commenced behind us I saw L