And the more thou spendest
     From thy little store,
With a double bounty,
     God will give thee more.

NORTH AND SOUTH.
BY THE AUTHOR OF MARY BARTON.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.

MARGARET was shown into the drawing-room.
It had returned into its normal state
of bag and covering. The windows were half
open because of the heat, and the Venetian
blinds covered the glass,—so that a gray
grim light, reflected from the pavement
below, threw all the shadows wrong, and
combined with the green-tinged upper light
to make even Margaret's own face, as she
caught it in the mirrors, look ghastly and
wan. She sat and waited; no one came.
Every now and then the wind seemed to
bear the distant multitudinous sound nearer;
and yet there was no wind! It died away
into profound stillness between whiles.

Fanny came in at last.

"Mamma will come directly, Miss Hale.
She desired me to apologise to you as it is.
Perhaps you know my brother has imported
hands from Ireland, and it has irritated the
Milton people excessively—as if he had not a
right to get labour where he could; and the
stupid wretches here would not work for
him; and now they've frightened these poor
Irish starvelings so with their threats, that
we daren't let them out. You may see them
huddled in that top room in the mill,—and
they're to sleep there to keep them safe from
those brutes, who will neither work nor let
them work. And mamma is seeing about
their food, and John is speaking to them, for
some of the women are crying to go back.
Ah! here's mamma!"

Mrs. Thornton came in, with a look of
black sternness on her face, which made
Margaret feel she had arrived at a bad time
to trouble her with her request. However,
it was only in compliance with Mrs. Thornton's
expressed desire that she would ask for
whatever they might want in the progress of
her mother's illness. Mrs. Thornton's brow
contracted, and her mouth grew set, while
Margaret spoke with gentle modesty of her
mother's restlessness, and Dr. Donaldson's
wish that she should have the relief of a
water-bed. She ceased. Mrs. Thornton did
not reply immediately. Then she started up
and exclaimed—

"They're at the gates! Call John, Fanny,
—call him in from the mill! They are at the
gates! They will batter them in! Call
John, I say!"

And simultaneously the gathering tramp
—to which she had been listening, instead ot
heeding Margaret's words—was heard just
right outside the wall, aud an increasing din
of angry voices raged behind the wooden
barrier, which shook as if the unseen
maddened crowd made battering-rams of their
bodies, and retreated a short space only to
come with more united steady impetus against
it, till their great beats made the strong gates
quiver, like reeds before the wind.

The women gathered round the windows,
fascinated to look on the scene which terrified
them. Mrs. Thornton, the women-servants,
Margaret,—all were there. Fanny had
returned, screaming upstairs as if pursued at
every step, and had thrown herself in hysterical
sobbing on the sofa. Mrs. Thornton
watched for her son, who was still in the
mill. He came out, looked up at them—the
pale cluster of faces—and smiled good
courage to them, before he locked the factory-door.
Then he called to one of the women to
come down and undo his own door, which
Fanny had fastened behind her in her mad
flight. Mrs. Thornton herself went. And
the sound of his well-known and commanding
voice seemed to have been like the taste of
blood to the infuriated multitude outside.
Hitherto they had been voiceless, wordless,
needing all their breath, for their hard
labouring efforts to break down the gates.
But now, hearing him speak inside, they set
up such a fierce unearthly groan, that even
Mrs. Thornton was white with fear as she
preceded him into the room. He came in a
little flushed, but his eyes gleaming, as in,
answer to the trumpet-call of danger, and
with a proud look of defiance on his face,
that made him a noble, if not a handsome
man. Margaret had always dreaded lest her
courage should fail her in any emergency,
and she should be proved to be, what she
dreaded lest she was—a coward. But now,
in this real great time of reasonable fear and
nearness of terror, she forgot herself, aud felt
only an intense sympathy—intense to
painfulness—in the interests of the moment.

Mr. Thornton came frankly forwards:

"I am sorry, Miss Hale, you have visited
us at this unfortunate moment, when, I fear,
you may be involved in whatever risk we
have to bear. Mother! had not you better
go into the back rooms? I'm not sure if they
may not have made their way from Pinner's
lane into the stable-yard; but if not, you will
be safer there than here. Go Jane!"
continued he, addressing the upper servant. And
she went, followed by the others.

"I stop here!" said his mother. "Where
you are, there I stay." And indeed, retreat
into the back rooms was of no avail; the
crowd had surrounded the outbuildings at
the rear, and were sending forth their awful
threatening roar behind. The servants
retreated into the garrets, with many a cry and
shriek. Mr. Thornton smiled scornfully as he
heard them. He glanced at Margaret, standing
all by herself at the window nearest to
the factory. Her eyes glittered, her colour
was deepened on cheek and lip. As if she