“Arthur!” she cried, sharply, as if transfixed with a sudden pain; and for the first time since he had entered he looked up at her face. Her eyes were bright with a starting of tears, and her lips were parted and drawn downwards. He did not raise his hands, but in a moment her head was on his breast. There was a murmuring in the market-place; the crowd was returning. She was sobbing and speaking against the cloth of his coat, and his head was bowed to catch her words. “Oh, all the time I’ve longed for it--all my life--but I didn’t think to get it like this!” she was murmuring brokenly. “Oh, among harsh and grudging folk I ha’ thought o’ gentle and bonnie things, and soft and that! And I’d thought never to know ’em now, after I’d said ‘Yes’ to you, Arthur. And you’ve right done wi’ it, love?” “Ay, sweetheart, come what may.” “Oh, ay--ay--then whatever it costs, even that o’ yon bed, I’ll hug it and think mysel’ happy!... And you’ll come really courting me now, dear--not like the last?” “Kiss me, Cissie....” Their lips met. Thrice they kissed; and then she murmured, “And now that I have you I must send you away! Oh, I have so much to do! But you’ll come in the morning, love?” “Yes, yes,” he promised her, with a brave smile. But as it happened, he was not to come in the morning, for that afternoon all Horwick was thrown into a new commotion. All the afternoon the square had remained thronged, and at five o’clock more men began to run in, as they had done earlier in the day. At half-past five, a chaise, driven at the head of a company of soldiers, passed down the Fullergate, and in the chaise sat Jeremy Cope, his spectacles off, nodding and blinking, with one short leg curled up beneath him. CHAPTER XII. THE CLOTH MERCHANT. Every man who had anything to conceal--a file, a suspicious-looking pair of shears, a paper or snuffbox of clippings--made haste to conceal it; and for that which was already hidden they sought safer and yet safer places. There was a deal of the dangerous stuff about. During the building of the furnaces, filings and such small matters had been disdained, and for weeks had accumulated uncollected. They began now to rummage chimneys, dusty rafters, the upper back-shelves of cupboards, and to hide it again in their gun-cartridges, in hollows they burned in the galley-baulks of their looms (tallowing all over again), in holes in yards and gardens, in the linings of their jackets and caps. The work began within an hour of Cope’s return; it lasted throughout the night. Even neighbours were scarce to be trusted, for no man knew but in his own extremity another might turn against him. And as they ran here and there, hiding and rehiding, they planned itineraries of escape in the last resort.