of bullets, and two or three cartridges, to
distribute among the Longroyd Mill men. They
met at night, about ten o'clock, when it was not
quite dark, about three miles from Cartwright's
mill, in the fields of Sir George Armitage, at the
obelisk (or, as the Luddites quaintly
nicknamed it, "the dumb steeple"). When more
than a hundred men had assembled, Mellor and
Thorpe, the two young leaders, mustered the
Luds, and called them over, not by names,
but by numbers, in military fashion; there
were three companies—the musket, the pistol,
and the hatchet companies; the rest carried
sledge-hammers, adzes, and bludgeons. They
were formed in lines two deep, and William
Hale (No. 7), a cropper from Longroyd Mill,
and a man named Rigge, were ordered by
Mellor to go last and drive the Luds up, and
see that no coward stole off in the darkness; for
there were many Luds who only joined through
fear of being assassinated, and had no heart in
the matter. The order to march was at last given,
and the band proceeded over wild Hartshead
Moor, and from thence into a close sixty yards
from Rawfold Mill, where the musket-men put
on masks, got ready their fire-arms, and took a
draught of rum to cheer them on to the attack.
Mellor then formed his company of musket-
men into lines of thirteen abreast, and moved
on to the doomed mill, followed by Thorpe and
his pistol-men.

In the mean time, Mr. Cartwright, who
had apprehensions of an attack, was in the
great stone many-windowed building. The
great water-wheels were still; the only sound
was the ripple of the water in the mill-dam.
The alarm-bell, rising above the roof, stood out
dark against the sky. There was no light at
any window, and no noise. The five workmen
and their allies, the five soldiers, were asleep.
The armed men, intent on destruction and ready
for murder, to their design stole on like ghosts.
Soon after twelve, Mr. Cartwright, who had
just fallen asleep, was awoke by the violent
barking of a large dog kept chained inside the
mill for such a purpose.

The millowner leaps out of bed to give
the alarm, and as he opens his bedroom
door he hears twenty or thirty of the three
hundred panes of glass on the ground floor
shattered in; at the same time there is a
rattle and blaze of musketry at the ground
and upper windows; the bullets whistle, and
splinter, and flatten against the inner walls. At
the same time a score of sledge-hammers are
heard working at the chief door, and voices
shouting and threatening at the other entrances,
and indeed on all sides, except that on which
the mill-pool lies.

The hour is come at last. But Mr.
Cartwright is Yorkshire too, resolute, bold, and
of a good heart. He shouts to his men, and
they fly to arms, and load and cock their
muskets. He and one or two of his workpeople
run to the alarm-bell and pull fiercely at the rope,
till it clashes out its summons to the Hussars
at Liversedge and friends near or far.

This drives the Luddites stark staring mad ;
the firing becomes hotter; and a dozen of them
cry out:

"Fire at the bell-rope!" "Shoot away the
bell!" "D——that bell! get it, lads!"

(For they knew the soldiers would be on
them with their sabres if that bell clang many
minutes longer.) Presently the bell-rope breaks,
and two men are sent up to ring and fire
alternately. Cartwright and his men fire from the
upper loops of the mill obliquely at the howling
crowd that flash off their guns, and ply their
hammers, and snap their pistols at the detested
mill, where the ten men are glaring at them
from under covert. The fire from and against
the mill is hot, pelting, and furious.

"Bring up Enoch!" roar stentorian voices.

A big hammerman advances to the door, and
pounds at it with Enoch as if it were a block of
iron.

The rest shout:

"Bang up, my lads!" "In with you!"
"Are you in, my lads?" " Keep close." "In
with you, lads!" "D —— them. Kill them,
every one!"

Mellor then cries, with horrible imprecations,

"The door is opened!"

But it is not. They are wrong this time.
Enoch has been hard and heavy at it; it is true,
the panels are broken, so that a man's head might
go through, but the lock and bolt are not burst
yet. The planks are split with hatchets, the
malls have broken and chopped it into holes,
but the door still keeps faithful and fast. The
stone jambs of one entrance are wrenched out,
the frameworks are smashed in, still
Cartwright and his men keep up their fire from
between the flagstones that barricade the upper
windows, and some of the Luddites are struck.
There is a cry that some one is shot, and
a man has fallen on his face. Booth is down, and
there is hot blood on Dean's hands. Dean has
been shot through the door as he plied his hatchet.

There are only nine panes of glass left in the
ground floor; but Enoch has failed this time.
The firing has now gone on for twenty minutes,
and still flashes to and fro over the mill-pool,
from door to window, and from window to
door. A man named Walker is looking in at a
broken window, when a ball from one of
Cartwright's men strikes the edge of his hat. The
enraged Luddite instantly leans in and fires at
where the flash came from, taking the best aim
he can. As he said afterwards:

"I was determined to do it, though my hand
was shot off for it, and hand and pistol had gone
into the mill."

It is very dark, nothing can be seen on either
side but the jet of fire upwards and downwards
as the besieged fire from behind the paving-
stones, and the Luddites from their platoons.

But now from the clamorous crowd outside
came groans and screams; and the mob, either
intimidated, dreading the coming sabres, or
falling short of powder and ball, began to
slacken their fire. That gave the mill people
fresh courage, for they knew the Luddites were