of Edith, her mother, and her husband, it
was decided that perhaps all these plans of
hers would only secure her the more for
Henry Lennox. They kept her out of the
way of other friends who might have eligible
sons or brothers; and it was also agreed that
she never seemed to take much pleasure in
the society of any one but Henry, out of their
own family. The other admirers, attracted
by her appearance or the reputation of her
fortune, were swept away by her unconscious
smiling disdain into the paths frequented by
other beauties less fastidious, or other heiresses
with a larger amount of gold. Henry and she
grew slowly into closer intimacy; but neither
he nor she were people to brook the slightest
notice of their proceedings.

Meanwhile, at Milton the chimneys smoked,
the ceaseless roar and mighty beat, and
dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and strove
perpetually. Senseless and purposeless were
wood and iron and steam in their endless
labours; but the persistence of their
monotonous work was rivalled in tireless endurance
by the strong crowds, who, with sense and
with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking
after—What? In the streets there were
few loiterers,—none walking for mere
pleasure; every man's face was set in lines of
eagerness or anxiety; news was sought for
with fierce avidity; and men jostled each
other aside in the Mart and in the Exchange,
as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of
competition. There was gloom over the town.
Few came to buy, and those who did were
looked at suspiciously by the sellers; for
credit was insecure, and the most stable
might have their fortunes atfected by the
sweep in the great neighbouring port among
the shipping houses. Hitherto there had
been no failures in Milton; but, from the
immense speculations that had come to light
in making a bad end in America, and yet
nearer home, it was known that some Milton
houses of business must suffer so severely
that every day men's faces asked, if their
tongues did not, "What news? Who is gone?
How will it affect me?" And if two or three
spoke together, they dwelt rather on the
names of those who were safe than dared to
hint at those likely, in their opinion, to go;
for idle breath may, at such times, cause the
downfall of some who might otherwise
weather the storm; and one going down drags
many after. "Thornton is safe," say they.
"His business is large—extending every year;
but such a head as he has, and so prudent
with all his daring!" Then one man draws
another aside, and walks a little apart, and,
with head inclined into his neighbour's ear,
he says, "Thornton's business is large; but
he has spent his profits in extending it; he
has no capital laid by; his machinery is new
within these two years, and has cost him—
we won't say what!—a word to the wise!"
But that Mr. Harrison was a croaker,—a
man who had succeeded to his father's trade-
made fortune, which he feared to lose by
altering his mode of business to any having
a larger scope; yet he grudged every penny
made by others more daring and far-sighted.

But the truth was, Mr. Thornton was hard
pressed. He felt it acutely in his vulnerable
point—his pride in the commercial character
which he had established for himself. Architect
of his own fortunes, he attributed this to
no especial merit or qualities of his own, but
to the power which he believed that
commerce gave to every brave, honest, and
persevering man to raise himself to a level from
which he might see and read the great game
of worldly success, and honestly, by such far-
sightedness, command more power and
influence than in any other mode of life. Far
away, in the East and in the West, where his
person would never be known, his name was
to be regarded, and his wishes to be fulfilled,
and his word pass like gold. That was the
idea of merchant-life with which Mr. Thornton
had started. "Her merchants be like
princes," said his mother, reading the text
aloud, as if it were a trumpet-call to invite
her boy to the struggle. He was but like
many others—men, women, and children—
alive to distant, and dead to near things. He
sought to possess the influence of a name in
foreign countries and far-away seas,—to
become the head of a firm that should be
known for generations; and it had taken
him long silent years to come even to a
glimmering of what he might be now, to-day, here
in his own town, his own factory, among his
own people. He and they had led parallel
lives—very close, but never touching—till
the accident (or so it seemed) of his acquaintance
with Higgins. Once brought face to
face, man to man, with an individual of the
masses around him, and (take notice) out of
the character of master and workman, in the
first instance, they had each begun to recognise
that "we have all of us one human
heart." It was the fine point of the wedge;
and until now, when the apprehension of
losing his connection with two or three of
the workmen whom he had so lately begun
to know as men,—of having a plan or two,
which were experiments lying very close to
his heart, roughly nipped off without trial,—
gave a new poignancy to the subtle fear that
came over him from time to time; until now,
he had never recognised how much and how
deep was the interest he had grown of late
to feel in his position as manufacturer, simply
because it led him into such close contact,
and gave him the opportunity of so much
power, among a race of people strange, shrewd,
ignorant; but, above all, full of character and
strong human feeling.

He reviewed his position as a Milton
manufacturer. The strike a year and a half ago,
—or more, for it was now untimely wintry
weather, in a late spring,—that strike, when
he was young, and he now was old—had
prevented his completing some of the large