“This,” he whispered--for his constricted throat barely emitted a sound, “this--listen your best, for I can’t speak louder--this was that blackish clay with the flints, Fluett way, a pound of it--they’re all pounds. This one--this is that red earth with pyrites, a mile below the bellpits--I had to get that out with quicksilver--we can throw both those away.... Wait a minute.... Throw this away, too--that’s from Booth--no, Soyland. They’re nothing--not one in a hundred, you understand.... But this, that’s three and more in the hundred, is what we picked up to-day--three in the hundred, with all the lead consumed too--you scratched your feet a bit getting this.... And the biggest of all, eighty pounds to the ton--Holdsworth Head, where your stomach turned--take it....” He was utterly exhausted, but Ellah had drawn so near to the candle that his cropped hair singed. His prominent eyes gleamed with an avaricious light. “Have ye made these to-night?” he said hoarsely. “No--weeks--weeks--I’ll build a furnace, two furnaces, in the Slack ... a mill to crush it ... for fuel we’ll open up the coal again....” “And is Holdsworth Head made o’ this? Did ye say Holdsworth Head?--Ay, lie down a bit.” Monjoy had stretched himself, half-naked as he was, on the floor; he broke immediately into loud snoring. Ellah continued to look, now at him, and now at the beads of silver. After a while he blew out the candle and stretched himself on the floor by the side of his companion. CHAPTER V. THE WADSWORTH WEDDING. For one thing above all others Wadsworth is even yet renowned--its famous wedding. This memorable event came to pass about that time, and it began with the procuring by the new parson from John Emmason, the Horwick magistrate, the list of the King’s Hearth Tax. You have heard of the state in which the parson had found his church, and of the repairs which he had undertaken at his own cost. These repairs had not been effected in a day, nor for that matter in a couple of months; and Pim o’ Cuddy’s pigeons still fluttered against the new louver-boards of the belfry, seeking entrance. But the parson had contrived to instil such a fear into his bandy-legged clerk that Pim went in an extreme of penitence and humility; and for the humours of Pim’s re-conversion and of his vacillating conscience--well, Cole the clogger was the man to hear on that. From the magistrate, then, the parson procured this list. His church being at last ready, maybe he judged it expedient to make the nearer acquaintance of his parishioners. He set forth on a round of visits. Then followed something that puzzled the weavers of Wadsworth exceedingly.