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 hadn’t a right to get labour where he could; and the stupid wretches here wouldn’t 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’re at the gates!  They’ll batter them in!  Call John, I say!’

And simultaneously, the gathering tramp—­to which she had been listening, instead of heeding Margaret’s words—­was heard just right outside the wall, and 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 up-stairs 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