Mrs. Dinnett returned at midnight tearful, for the ancient woman at Chilcombe had died in her arms—­“at five after five,” as she said.

Mary Dinnett was an excitable and pessimistic person.  She always leapt to meet trouble half way and invariably lost her nerve upon the least opportunity to do so.  The peace of ‘The Magnolias’ had long offered her a fitting sanctum, for here life moved with the utmost simplicity and regularity; but, though as old as he was, Mary looked ahead to the time when Mr. Churchouse might fall, and could always win an ample misery from the reflection that she must then be at the mercy of an unfriendly world.

Sabina heard the full story of her grandmother’s decease with every detail of the passing, but it was the face of a young man, not the countenance of an old woman, that flitted through her thoughts as she went to sleep that night.

CHAPTER V

IN THE MILL

John Best was taking Raymond Ironsyde round the spinning mill, but the foreman had his own theory and proposed to initiate the young man by easy stages.

“You’ve seen the storehouses and the hacklers,” he said.  “Now if you just look into the works and get a general idea of the scheme of things, that’s enough for one day.”

In the great building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear:  a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din.  The bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that punctuated their deep-mouthed riot broke from the drawing heads of the machines.

A lofty, open roof, full of large sky-lights, covered the operating room, and in its uplifted dome supports and struts leapt this way and that, while, at the height of the walls, ran rods supporting rows of silver-bright wheels from which the power descended, through endless bands, to the machinery beneath.  The floor was of stone, and upon it were disposed the various machine systems—­the Card and Spreader, the Drawing Frames, Roving Frames, Gill Spinners and Spinning Frames.

The general blurred effect in Raymond’s mind was one of disagreeable sound, which made speech almost impossible.  The din drove at him from above and below; and it was accompanied by a thousand unfamiliar movements of flying bands and wheels and squat masses of machinery that convulsed and heaved and palpitated round him.  From nearly all the machines there streamed away continuous bright ribbons of hemp or flax, that caught the light and shone.  This was the ‘sliver,’ the wrought, textile material passing through its many changes before it came to the spinners.  The amber and lint-white coils of the winding sliver made a brightness among the duns and drabs around them and their colour was caught again aloft where whisps of material hung irregularly—­lumps of waste from the ends of the bobbins—­and there were also colour notes of warmth in the wooden wheels on many of the machines.  These struck a genial tone into the chill greys and flash of polished steel on every side.