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, and felt only an intense sympathy—­intense to painfulness—­in the interests of the moment.

Mr. Thornton came frankly forwards: 

’I’m 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! hadn’t you better go into the back rooms?  I’m not sure whether 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 the factory.  Her eyes glittered, her colour was deepened on cheek and lip.  As if she felt his look, she turned to him and asked a question that had been for some time in her mind: 

‘Where are the poor imported work-people?  In the factory there?’

’Yes!  I left them cowered up in a small room, at the head of a back flight of stairs; bidding them run all risks, and escape down there, if they heard any attack made on the mill-doors.  But it is not them—­it is me they want.’

‘When can the soldiers be here?’ asked his mother, in a low but not unsteady voice.

He took out his watch with the same measured composure with which he did everything.  He made some little calculation: 

’Supposing Williams got straight off when I told him, and hadn’t to dodge about amongst them—­it must be twenty minutes yet.’

‘Twenty minutes!’ said his mother, for the first time showing her terror in the tones of her voice.

‘Shut down the windows instantly, mother,’ exclaimed he:  ’the gates won’t bear such another shock.  Shut down that window, Miss Hale.’

Margaret shut down her window, and then went to assist Mrs. Thornton’s trembling fingers.

From some cause or other, there was a pause of several minutes in the unseen street.  Mrs. Thornton looked with wild anxiety at her son’s countenance, as if to gain the interpretation of the sudden stillness from him.  His face was set into rigid lines of contemptuous defiance; neither hope nor fear could be read there.