the light of a true, passionate lover was on his face, as he leaped into
the saddle. She watched him out of sight and then went into her home,
and with an inscrutable smile, began to arrange the ferns and bluebells
in a vase of cream-colored wedgewood.

In the meantime John had reached the Hatton mill, and after his long
absence he looked up at it with conscious pride. It was built of brick;
it was ten stories high; every story was full of windows, every story
airy as a bird-cage. Certainly it was not a thing of architectural
beauty, but it was a grandly organized machine where brains and hands,
iron and steel worked together for a common end. As John entered its big
iron gates, he saw bales of cotton going into the mill by one door, and
he knew the other door at which they would come out in the form of woven
calico. In rapid thought he followed them to the upper floors, and then
traveled down with them to the great weaving-rooms in the order their
processes advanced them. He knew that on the highest floor a devil would
tear the fiber asunder, that it would then go to the scutcher, and have
the dust and dirt blown away, then that carding machines would lay all
the fibers parallel, that drawing machines would group them into slender
ribbons, and a roving machine twist them into a soft cord, and then
that a mule or a throstle would spin the roving into yarn, and the yarn
would go to the weaving-rooms, where a thousand wonderful machines would
turn them into miles and miles of calico; the machines doing all the
hard work, while women and girls adjusted and supplied them with the
material.

It was to the great weaving-room John went first. As soon as he stood in
the open door he was seen and in a moment, as if by magic, the looms
were silenced, and the women and girls were on their feet, looking at
him with eager, pleasant faces. John lifted his hat and said good