e shutters
unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the
hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were
the darling of the neighbourhood, or--being, as he is, its
detestation--bore a 'charmed life,' as they say in tale-books. He takes
no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage--shot,
one in his own house and the other on the moor."

"But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too," interposed
Mr. Sweeting; "and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other
day."

"What did you hear, Davy?"

"You know Mike Hartley, sir?"

"The Antinomian weaver? Yes."

"When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally
winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his
mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his
doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting
in outer darkness."

"Well, that has nothing to do with Moore."

"Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller,
sir."

"I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide.
Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going
over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, 'the revenger of blood has
obtained satisfaction.' The fellow exults strangely in murder done on
crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already
heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is
that what you allude to, Sweeting?"

"You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal
hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after
him, but he has a _hankering_ that Moore should be made an example of.
He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with
the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore
should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike
Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?" inquired Sweeting simply.

"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or
perhaps a little of both."

"He talks of seeing visions, sir."

"Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was
going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to
him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon."

"Tell it, sir. What was it?" urged Sweeting.

"Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Mal