"An't you happy?" she asked him.

"Why—there's—awmost nobbody but has
their troubles, missus." He answered
evasively, because the old woman appeared to
take it for granted that he would be very
happy indeed, and he had not the heart to
disappoint her. He knew that there was
trouble enough in the world; and if the
old woman had lived so long, and could
count upon his having so little, why so
much the better for her, and none the worse
for him.

"Ay, ay! You have your troubles at
home, you mean?" she said.

"'Times. Just now and then," he answered
slightly.

"But, working under such a gentleman,
they don't follow you to the Factory?"

No, no; they didn't follow him there, said
Stephen. All correct there. Everything
accordant there. (He did not go so far as
to say, for her pleasure, that there was a
sort of Divine Right there; but, I have
heard claims almost as magnificent of late
years.)

They were now in the black bye-road near
the place, and the Hands were crowding in.
The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a
Serpent of many coils, and the Elephant was
getting ready. The strange old woman was
delighted with the very bell. It was the
beautifullest bell she had ever heard, she
said, and sounded grand!

She asked him, when he stopped good-
naturedly to shake hands with her before
going in, how long he had worked there?
"A dozen year," he told her.

"I must kiss the hand," said she, "that
has worked in this fine factory for a dozen
year!" And she lifted it, though he would
have prevented her, and put it to her lips.
What harmony, besides her age and her
simplicity, surrounded her, he did not know,
but even in this fantastic action there was
a something neither out of time nor place:
a something which it seemed as if nobody
else could have made as serious, or done
with such a natural and touching air.

He had been at his loom full half an
hour, thinking about this old woman, when,
having occasion to move round the loom
for its adjustment, he glanced through a
window which was in his corner, and saw her
still looking up at the pile of building, lost
in admiration. Heedless of the smoke and
mud and wet, and of her two long journeys,
she was gazing at it, as if the heavy thrum
that issued from its many stories were proud
music to her.

She was gone by and by, and the day went
after her, and the lights sprung up again, and
the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy
Palace over the arches near: little felt amid
the jarring of the machinery, and scarcely
heard above its crash and rattle. Long
before then, his thoughts had gone back to
the dreary room above the little shop, and to
the shameful figure heavy on the bed, but
heavier on his heart.

Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like
a fainting pulse; stopped. The bell again;
the glare of light and heat dispelled; the
factories, looming heavy in the black wet night;
their tall chimneys rising up into the air like
competing Towers of Babel.

He had spoken to Rachael only last night,
it was true, and had walked with her a little
way; but he had his new misfortune on him,
in which no one else could give him a
moment's relief, and, for the sake of it, and
because he knew himself to want that softening
of his anger  which no voice but hers
could effect, he felt he might so far disregard
what she had said as to wait for her
again. He waited, but she had eluded him.
She was gone. On no other night in the
year, could he so ill have spared her patient
face.

O! Better to have no home in which to
lay his head, than to have a home and dread
to go to it, through such a cause. He ate
and drank, for he was exhausted—but, he
little knew or cared what; and he wandered
about in the chill rain, thinking and thinking,
and brooding and brooding.

No word of a new marriage had ever
passed between them; but Rachael had taken
great pity on him years ago, and to her
alone he had opened his closed heart all this
time, on the subject of his miseries; and he
knew very well that if he were free to ask
her, she would take him. He thought of the
home he might at that moment have been
seeking with pleasure and pride; of the
different man he might have been that night;
of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden
breast; of the then restored honor, self-
respect, and tranquillity, now all torn to
pieces. He thought of the waste of the best
part of his life, of the change it made in his
character for the worse every way, of the
dreadful nature of his existence, bound hand
and foot to a dead woman, and tormented by
a demon in her shape. He thought of
Rachael, how young when they were first
brought together in these circumstances, how
mature now, how soon to grow old. He
thought of the number of girls and women
she had seen marry, how many homes with
children in them she had seen grow up
around her, how she had contentedly pursued
her own lone quiet path—for him—and how
he had sometimes seen a shade of melancholy
on her blessed face, that smote him with
remorse and despair. He set the picture
of her up, beside the infamous image of last
night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole
earthly course of one so gentle, good, and
self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch
as that!

Filled with these thoughts—so filled that
he had an unwholesome sense of growing
larger, of being placed in some new and
diseased relation towards the objects among