-for the world.

"How and when would it end?" was the demand throbbing in their throbbing
pulses. "Would a juncture arise in which they could be useful?" was what
they waited to see; for though Shirley put off their too-late arrival
with a jest, and was ever ready to satirize her own or any other
person's enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land for a
chance of rendering good service.

The chance was not vouchsafed her; the looked-for juncture never came.
It was not likely. Moore had expected this attack for days, perhaps
weeks; he was prepared for it at every point. He had fortified and
garrisoned his mill, which in itself was a strong building. He was a
cool, brave man; he stood to the defence with unflinching firmness.
Those who were with him caught his spirit, and copied his demeanour. The
rioters had never been so met before. At other mills they had attacked
they had found no resistance; an organized, resolute defence was what
they never dreamed of encountering. When their leaders saw the steady
fire kept up from the mill, witnessed the composure and determination of
its owner, heard themselves coolly defied and invited on to death, and
beheld their men falling wounded round them, they felt that nothing was
to be done here. In haste they mustered their forces, drew them away
from the building. A roll was called over, in which the men answered to
figures instead of names. They dispersed wide over the fields, leaving
silence and ruin behind them. The attack, from its commencement to its
termination, had not occupied an hour.

Day was by this time approaching; the west was dim, the east beginning
to gleam. It would have seemed that the girls who had watched this
conflict would now wish to hasten to the victors, on whose side all
their interest had been enlisted; but they only very cautiously
approached the now battered mill, and when suddenly a number of soldiers
and gentlemen appeared at the great door opening into the yard, they
quickly stepped aside into a shed, the deposit of old iron and timber,
whence they could see without being seen.

It was no cheering spectacle. These premises were now a mere blot of
desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn. All the copse up the
Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just
here, in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the
night from control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and
left it waste a