gun, and some fish-hooks and knives, and how
soon the scene is changed! Yet they want
clothes; and in order to make them shirts, for
instance, six or seven out of the ten are
constantly employed in making the linen. This
throws a monstrous burden of labour on the
other three, who have to provide the food. But
send them a loom, and you release six out of the
seven from the shirt-making concern, and ease
as well as plenty immediately succeeds. ln these
simple cases the question is decided at once in
favour of machines."

These arguments are irrefutable, and may be
thus summarised: Improved machinery lowers
the price of production. The cheaper a fabric
is, the greater is the demand for it, and it at once
undersells the fabric produced without
machinery. Where the demand for a certain fabric
increases, more hands are of course employed.
Younger persons can work at machinery than at
handicrafts where strength is required. Suppose
machinery abolished in Lancashire: that would
not prevent its being employed elsewhere. The
wife and children would be thrown out of work by
the stopping of the lighter machinery. The
husband and father, having to support his family
alone, requires higher wages. Prices are raised
to meet this drain for more wages. Trade again
flows to the cheaper market. The trade in the
non-progressive or riotous places dwindles.
Fewer workmen are required; down go wages;
and Poverty, Famine, and Death, those cruel
teachers of political economy, creep into the
half-deserted factories, and push the workmen
from their seats into the graves that have long
been gaping at their feet.

In February, 1812, Mr. Ryder brought in a
bill rendering frame-breaking a capital offence.
The act passed, and was continued in force till
March 1, 1814.

       TWELVE MONTHS OF MY LIFE.
   IN TWELVE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER XI.

I GATHERED myself under the shelter of the
shadow of death. Sitting behind the bed-curtains
in the darkened sick-room, I fought with
my own heart for dear life, till the feeble moans
beside me filled me with dismay at the unnatural
division of my thoughts at such a time, and I
drew nearer the bed, keeping my eyes upon the
suffering face and holding the suffering hand,
while by desperate force of will I concentrated
all my existence into one feeling and a hundred
acts of sympathy for my stricken father. For
he was still my father, and stricken, though he
had wrung all the joy out of my life. Must he
die now, and take it with him where it could
avail him nothing? How gladly would I have
gone in his place, and left to him prosperity,
with Luke Elphinstone's friendship! I crushed
my own identity out of the sick-room into the
outer world to which it belonged, and became
merely a silent woman with noiseless feet and
watchful eyes. I was my father's nurse,
nothing more.

Luke Elphinstone was troubled for me;
indeed, I think he was. I believe he was troubled
about more than me, but at that time I did not
know, I would not think about the matter. He
used to come to the door to ask for my father,
and he looked worn and haggard about the
eyes. I used to think, as I closed the door, I
did not believe he had so much unselfish feeling
in him. This was because I had shut my thoughts
upon other matters.

I have often wondered since, looking back,
how any one could so stave off, single-handed,
the near assaults of an impending lifelong
misery as I did in those darkened days, sitting
in the lonely quiet of a dim room. It was the
shadow of death that hung between me and the
future like a great shield. So long as the doctor
came every day, and shook his head, saying,
"Patience, my dear young lady!—it is all he
will require of you more in this world, and that
only for a little time"—so long as he said this,
I sat forgetting my own name and features, and
deaf and dumb to the voices that came crying to
me through the chinks of the door. But when
he came at last, and said, "Ah, Miss Mattie,
there is hope! Cheer up, my dear, and go out
to the garden for a little air," then the pent-up
currents of life came rushing back into my
veins, and I went forth into the brilliant
autumn daylight and moaned for the callousness
of the sunshine, and railed in my burning
heart against the cruelty of the world.

I shrank from my lonely listless saunters out
of doors. The garden was still gay, though its
summer glories were dead; there were sad winds
about, and the leaves were falling; dropping,
dropping. One could not walk but they came
fluttering in one's face and beating about one's
breast, like passionate tears from the trees, that
in all the magnificence of their fading beauty
lashed their tawny boughs against the sky, and
complained because the fiat of decay had gone
forth against them. I hated the harsh rustling
of the dead leaves under my feet. I had not
even the heart to make myself an autumn posy.
I looked at the flowers, and left them as trifles
which had no longer any interest; I fled if a
blackbird uttered a note. I left the glowing
out-door world, in which I seemed
already a stranger, forgotten and forsaken by
all my old friends of sight and sound, and
returned to the dim dull house, to the
empty shadowy rooms, to the ticking clock on
the staircase, the streak of stealthy light on
the wall, the muffled steps, the whispering
voices.

At evenings, when I had to leave Elspie in
charge of the sick-room awhile, I made my
walk up and down the long lobby where my
mother's ghost was believed to pace at night.
And here all that had occurred in my last hours
at Eldergowan came back, as a dream will
return bit by bit far on through the day after it
has been dreamed. I remembered that Mark
had owned his love for me, had reproached me,
invited me to trust him, to tell him my troubles.
Had I been less hard, had I shown less coldly