arched, but were, by the very size of the
dreamy lids, raised to a considerable distance
from the eyes. Now, in Mr. Thornton's face
the straight brows fell low over the clear,
deep-set earnest eyes, which, without being
unpleasantly sharp, seemed intent enough to
penetrate into the very heart and core of
what he was looking at. The lines in the face
were few but firm, as if they were carved in
marble, and lay principally about the lips,
which were slightly compressed over a set of
teeth so faultless and beautiful as to give the
effect of sudden sunlight when the rare bright
smile, coming in an instant and shining out
of the eyes, changed the whole look from the
severe and resolved expression of a man
ready to do and dare everything, to the keen
honest enjoyment of the moment, which is
seldom shown so fearlessly and instantaneously
except by children. Margaret liked this
smile; it was the first thing she had admired
in this new friend of her father's; and the
opposition of character, shown in all these
details of appearance she had just been
noticing, seemed to explain the attraction they
evidently felt towards each other.

She rearranged her mother's worsted-work,
and fell back into her own thoughts
—as completely forgotten by Mr. Thornton
as if she had not been in the
room, so thoroughly was he occupied in
explaining to Mr. Hale the magnificent
power, yet delicate adjustment of the might
of the steam-hammer, which was recalling to
Mr. Hale some of the wonderful stories of
subservient genii in the Arabian Nights — one
moment stretching from earth to sky and
filling all the width of the horizon, at the
next obediently compressed into a vase small
enough to be borne in the hand of a child.

"And this imagination of power, this
practical realisation of a gigantic thought, came
out of one man's brain in our good town. That
very man has it within him to mount step by
step on each wonder he achieves to higher
marvels still. And I'll be bound to say, we
have many among us who, if he were gone,
could spring into the breach and carry on the
war which compels, and shall compel, all
material power to yield to science."

"Your boast reminds me of the old lines—

"I've a hundred captains in England," he said,
"As good as ever was he."

(At her father's quotation Margaret looked
suddently up with inquiring wonder in her
eyes. How in the world had they got from
cog-wheels to Chevy Chace?)

" It is no boast of mine," replied Mr.
Thornton; "it is plain matter-of-fact. I
won't deny that I am proud of belonging to a
town— or perhaps I should rather say a
district— the necessities of which give birth to
such grandeur of conception. I would rather
be a man toiling, suffering—nay, failing and
successless— here, than lead a dull prosperous
life in the old worn grooves of what you call
more aristocratic society down in the South,
with their slow days of careless ease. One
may be clogged with honey and unable to rise
and fly."

"You are mistaken," said Margaret, roused
by the aspersion on her beloved South to a
fond vehemence of defence that brought the
colour into her cheeks and the angry tears
into her eyes. " You do not know anything
about the South. If there is less adventure
or less progress — I suppose I must not say
less excitement — from the gambling spirit of
trade, which seems requisite to force out these
wonderful inventions, there is less suffering
also. I see men here going about in the
streets who look ground down by some
pinching sorrow or care — who are not only
sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we
have our poor, but there is not that terrible
expression in their countenances of a sullen
sense of injustice which I see here. You do
not know the South, Mr. Thornton," she
concluded, collapsing into a determined silence,
and angry with herself for having said so
much.

"And may I say you do not know the
North?" asked he, with an inexpressible
gentleness in his tone, as he saw that he had
really hurt her. She continued resolutely
silent; yearning after the lovely haunts she
had left far away in Hampshire, with a
passionate longing that made her feel her
voice would be unsteady and trembling if she
spoke.

"At any rate, Mr. Thornton," said Mrs.
Hale, " you will allow that Milton is a much
more smoky, dirty town than you will ever
meet with in the South."

''' I am afraid I must give up its cleanliness,"
said Mr. Thornton, with the quick
gleaming smile. " But we are bidden by
parliament to burn our own smoke; so I
suppose like good little children, we shall do as we
are bid — some time."

"But I think you told me you had altered
your chimneys so as to consume the smoke,
did you not?" asked Mr. Hale.

"Mine were altered by my own will, before
parliament meddled with the affair. It was
an immediate outlay, but it repays me in the
saving of coal. I am not sure whether I
should have done it, if I had waited until
the act was passed. At any rate, I should
have waited to be informed against and fined,
and given all the trouble in yielding that I
legally could. But all laws which depend for
their enforcement upon informers and fines,
become inert from the odiousness of the
machinery. I doubt if there has been a
chimney in Milton informed against for five
years past, although some are constantly sending
out one-third of their coal in what is
called here unparliamentary smoke."

"I only know it is impossible to keep the
muslin blinds clean here above a week
together; and at Helstone we have had them
up for a month or more, and they have not