But oh! it will be a sore day for this hillside, and all the country round when that day shall be. What is to become of those who now keep a decent roof over their heads, and tho' times be bad can still give bit and sup to wife and bairns. You may make new machines but you cannot make new men to order. And see to it that it be not now with thee as in the days of Pharaoh of old, when Aaron's rod swallowed up the rods of the wise men and the sorcerers, and thy rod too be swallowed up. If that came to pass of which I have read and heard, there will be no room in this valley for men of but moderate means. Yo' may build a mill, but bigger men will build bigger mills, and the bigger mills will swallow up the less, and thou and thy son, and even Mary yonder may be fain, thou in thy old age and they in their prime, to take wage at another's hand, and to do a hireling's task in another's mill." "If I do may I be--" "William," said my mother, before my father could conclude, and we could only guess what awful doom my father was about to invoke upon himself. But enough had been said. Whether the mind of our household's head were the more moved by the picture of his friends and neighbours reduced to want, or by the picture of himself and his working for others, who had always puts out work ourselves, I know not; but from that day forth there was no more thought for many a long day of any change in the ways we had used of old, and, for the new machines, my mother died in the belief that the curse of Scripture was upon them. CHAPTER II.