they stopped at the great door of the factory. He went in alone,
Knowles going down the street. One trifle, strange in its way,
he remembered afterwards. Holding the roll of paper in his hand
that would make the mill his, he went, in his slow, grave way,
down the long passage to the loom-rooms. There was a crowd of
porters and firemen there, as usual, and he thought one of them
hastily passed him in the dark passage, hiding behind an engine.
As the shadow fell on him, his teeth chattered with a chilly
shudder. He smiled, thinking how superstitious people would say
that some one trod on his grave just then, or that Death looked
at him, and went on. Afterwards he thought of it. Going through
the office, the fat old book-keeper, Huff, stopped him with a
story he had been keeping for him all day. He liked to tell a
story to Holmes; he could see into a joke; it did a man good to
hear a fellow laugh like that. Holmes did laugh, for the story
was a good one, and stood a moment, then went in, leaving the old
fellow chuckling over his desk. Huff did not know how, lately,
after every laugh, this man felt a vague scorn of himself, as if
jokes and laughter belonged to a self that ought to have been
dead long ago. Perhaps, if the fat old book-keeper had known it,
he would have said that the man was better than he knew. But
then,--poor Huff! He passed slowly through the alleys between
the great looms. Overhead the ceiling looked like a heavy maze
of iron cylinders and black swinging bars and wheels, all in
swift, ponderous motion. It was enough to make a brain dizzy
with the clanging thunder of the engines, the whizzing spindles
of red and yellow, and the hot daylight glaring over all. The
looms were watched by women, most of them bold, tawdry girls of
fifteen or sixteen, or lean-jawed women from the hills, wives of
the coal-diggers. There was a breathless odour of copperas. As