And, considering Annie, not without excuse. She was of the few’ who stood up straight, untwisted by the factory, though it had caught her young and tamed her cruelly. There was gypsy blood in her. She, of a wandering tribe, had been taught “habits of industry,” and the lesson had been a rack which, still, had not broken her. It hadn’t quenched her light, though, within him, John had the fiercer fire. With him, the signs of the factory hand were hung out for all to see. Pale-faced and stunted, with a great shock of hair and weak, peering eyes, he was more like some underground creature than a man living by the grace of God and the light of the sun--he had lived so much of life by the artificial light of the factory in the long evenings and the winter mornings; but he had a kind of eagerness, a sort of Peeping Tom of a spirit refusing to be ordered off, and a suggestion of wiriness both of mind and body, which announced that here was one whose quality declined obliteration by the System. Lovers had a consolation in those days. Bone-tired as the long work-hours left them, it was yet possible by a short walk to get out of the town that Hepplestall had made. These two were married, and a married woman had no manner of business to steal away from her house when the factory had finished with her for the day, but that was what Phoebe made Annie do. That was Phoebe’s tribute to youth, and a heavy tribute, too. She, like them, had labored all day in the factory and at night she labored in the home, sending them out to the moors as if they were careless lovers still--at their age! Phoebe kept her secret, and she had the sentiment of owing John reparation. It was not much that she could do, but she did this--growing old, toil-worn, she took the lion’s share of housework, she set them free, for an hour or so, to go upon the moors. And Annie was grateful more than John. Already, he was town-bred, already he craved for shelter, already the overheated factory seemed nature’s atmosphere to John. She threw herself on the yielding heather, smelling it, and earth and air in ecstasy, then rolled on her back and looked at the stars. “Lad, lad,” she cried, “there’s good in life for all that.” “Aye, wench,” he said, “there’s you.” “Me? There’s bigger things than me. There’s air and sky and a world that is no beastly reek and walls and roofs.” “It’s cold on the moor to-night,” he said, shivering. She threw her shawl about him. “You’re clemmed,” she said, drawing him close to the generous warmth of her. “Seems to me I come to life under the stars. Food don’t matter greatly to me if there’s air as I can breathe.” “We’re prisoned in yon factory, Annie. Reckon I’m used to the prison. There’s boggarts on the moor.” She laughed at his fears. “Aye, you may laugh,” he said, “but there was a gallows up here, and boggarts of the hanged still roam.”