"I am that," said Mr. Horsfall, "and well content I am with them. They finish the cloth better far than the best croppers ever did or could, and one machine can do the work of four men." "Then you will need less men," said Mr. Scott, "and this is no time to be sacking men--I remember what happened twenty years ago when Grimshaw, of Manchester, arranged with Dr. Cartwright, the new Bishop Blaize as they called him, to set up four hundred looms at Manchester to be run by a steam engine. Grimshaw received hundreds of threatening letters, he was fired at more than once, his wife nearly fell into a decline from constant fear, and just when the mill was built, for four hundred looms, and part of the machines were in, mill and looms and all were swallowed up in a fire, and who made the fire you may well guess. It ruined Grimshaw, and now he goes about saying he wishes Bishop Blaize had been in blazes 'fore ever he had tempted him with his fine stories. But you Whigs will never be content with the wisdom of our forefathers. You must have something new fangled, either in mill or state"--and so they off again into politics; and having promised my mother to be home by milking time, and fearful if I stayed longer the fumes of the tobacco and the wine would be too much for an unseasoned head, I took my leave of Mr. Scott and won my way into the open air. By the stepping-stones that crossed the river, who should I see but Soldier Jack and a merry party that had been out with the harriers. They had come trooping down Kitchen Fold from over Crosland Moor way, and were in high feather, shouting and singing, while the hounds bayed in chorus. Soldier Jack was no man's lad, a bye-blow. He had been left on the Workhouse steps tied in a bundle, and nought to show who was his father or who his mother. Then when he was a lad of ten years old the Overseer had 'prenticed him out to a shoemaker in Huddersfield, but he had been a sore trial to his master--disappearing and appearing when he liked, and neither fair words nor the strap, of which his master was not sparing if Jack spoke truth, availing to make him follow the old adage and stick to the last. Then one fine day the recruiting sergeant, in all his bravery, had put up at the Rose and Crown, and called on all gallant lads to take the king's shilling and fight for glory and their country. "That's the colour for me to dye," thought Jack, and braving the law, which would have laid him by the heels for breaking his writings, he 'listed in a foot regiment, and was off for the wars with a heart as light as the heels he showed his master. Then many a year passed. Jack was unseen and forgotten in the haunts of his youth, when lo! he appeared, from God knows where, straight as a picking rod, brown as a berry, minus the left arm, and with a limp of his right leg; but otherwise sound as a bell and tight as a drum. He had some money, in the coinage of all the countries of Europe well nigh; and, as I heard tell,