f your life to stir up dissension. You
no more sympathize with the poor who are in distress than you sympathize
with me. You incite them to outrage for bad purposes of your own; so
does the individual called Noah of Tim's. You two are restless,
meddling, impudent scoundrels, whose chief motive-principle is a selfish
ambition, as dangerous as it is puerile. The persons behind you are some
of them honest though misguided men; but you two I count altogether
bad."

Barraclough was going to speak.

"Silence! You have had your say, and now I will have mine. As to being
dictated to by you, or any Jack, Jem, or Jonathan on earth, I shall not
suffer it for a moment. You desire me to quit the country; you request
me to part with my machinery. In case I refuse, you threaten me. I _do_
refuse--point-blank! Here I stay, and by this mill I stand, and into it
will I convey the best machinery inventors can furnish. What will you
do? The utmost you _can_ do--and this you will never _dare_ to do--is to
burn down my mill, destroy its contents, and shoot me. What then?
Suppose that building was a ruin and I was a corpse--what then, you lads
behind these two scamps? Would that stop invention or exhaust science?
Not for the fraction of a second of time! Another and better gig-mill
would rise on the ruins of this, and perhaps a more enterprising owner
come in my place. Hear me! I'll make my cloth as I please, and according
to the best lights I have. In its manufacture I will employ what means I
choose. Whoever, after hearing this, shall dare to interfere with me may
just take the consequences. An example shall prove I'm in earnest."

He whistled shrill and loud. Sugden, his staff and warrant, came on the
scene.

Moore turned sharply to Barraclough. "You were at Stilbro'," said he; "I
have proof of that. You were on the moor, you wore a mask, you knocked
down one of my men with your own hand--you! a preacher of the
gospel!--Sugden, arrest him!"

Moses was captured. There was a cry and a rush to rescue, but the right
hand which all this while had lain hidden in Moore's breast,
reappearing, held out a pistol.

"Both barrels are loaded," said he. "I'm quite determined! Keep off!"

Stepping backwards, facing the foe as he went, he guarded his prey to
the counting-house. He ordered Joe Scott to pass in with Sugden and the
prisoner, and to bolt the door inside. For himself, he walked backwards
and forwards along the front of the mill, lookin