"And yo' desert the Luds? Our greatest enemy lies low. I have struck the blow that others feared to strike, and terror palsies the oppressors of the poor. And in the supreme hour of our triumph you draw back?" "I draw back." "You brave the consequences of your broken oath, you earn for yourself the hatred of the poor, the obloquy and the doom of the traitor?" "I brave them." "Then out upon you, Ben Bamforth, for a false and perjured knave. The hour of trial and of danger has come, and it finds thee false. Oh! bitter the day and cursed the hour I took yo' to my heart, and bitter the rue thou'st sup for this. And yo' Mary, I've a word to say to yo'. But cannot I speak to thee alone?" I made as tho' to leave the house, but Mary stayed me by a touch. "Say what yo' have to say before Ben. Yo' can have nought to say to me he cannot hear." "Nay I care not if tha does'na. He may listen if tha likes. All th' world may know for me. It has to be said, as well now as another time, tho' it's a rum courting to be sure. Tha knows aw love thee, Mary; tha knows aw've sought thee and only thee this many a month back?" "I know yo've said so, George." "And yo' did not say me nay. Yo' bid me bide my time, said yo' did not know yor own mind, that yo' were ower young to think o' such things yet, and put me off. But tha did not send me away wi'out hope, Mary, and I thought that in the bottom of your heart there was a tiny seedling that in time would flower to love." "And so it might have done, George, but when it was a tender plant, a cold frost came and nipped it." "I cannot follow yo', Mary, I am distraught in mind. All this night I have wandered the fields and in the lanes. A hundred times I have set my face over the hills to leave this cursed country." "And your work behind you!" I put in, but he heeded me not. "But the thought of you, Mary, held me back. I must know your heart, your mind to me. If yo' will be mine, if yo' will give me your word to wed me in quieter days, I will quit this work. Things will quieten themselves. A month or two and the Luddites will be forgotten. Our secrets are well kept. The Government will be only too glad to let sleeping dogs lie, and in another country, under another sky under the flag of the free Republic that has spurned the fetters of its English mother, you and I will seek fortune, hand-in-hand." "There is blood upon your hand, George Mellor. Mine it shall never clasp again." "So be it I need not stoop to woo too humbly. My star is o'ercast now, but a day shall come when yo' will regret the hour yo' spurned George Mellor's love. And yo! Ben Bamforth, traitor to your friend's confided love," . . . . and he turned upon me fiercely with flashing eye and clenched fist, and all his wrath surged to his lips and he would have gladly poured it out on me.