He was not the man, however, to be disheartened by one repulse, and he had sufficient knowledge of human nature to realise that the coolness of his neighbours would gradually disappear as they accustomed themselves to the changed conditions, and that the best way to secure their trade was to make adequate preparations for turning out good and expeditious work. None of the workpeople had left him and he made it his first business to secure their favour by treating them well. The interval of stagnation was filled by painting the premises and making improvements in the shop. Within a fortnight a new machine was installed; before a month had passed two others followed; and everybody knew that the new proprietor was going to make a bid for trade on a large scale. Little wonder if, with such ample stores of warp and woof to draw upon, report and rumour worked as busily as a weaver’s shuttle, and produced a pile of material which the villagers cut and shaped according to their skill and judgment. This, however, was not all. The sensation caused by the robbery and its dramatic sequel in Baldwin’s downfall was still keen when a new crop of rumours arose simultaneously with a change in the weather. Up to now the landscape had been wrapped in its thick warm mantle of snow, and for weeks on end the occupants of the scattered farms on the uplands had been compelled to shut themselves up in their snug kitchens and turn over and over again such scraps of spirit-stirring news as reached them from the throbbing centre of their world—this moorland metropolis of Mawm. It was towards the middle of January that the weather broke, and a rapid thaw was followed by torrential rains and wild winds that swept over the moors from the south-west and washed every secret crevice of the Pennines. On one of the wildest and darkest of these nights a man of the far moors whose thirst for good ale and good company had kept him at the “Packhorse” until closing-time, and who had then accepted Swithin’s invitation to accompany him to the shippen in the Long Close where he had a heifer to dispose of, had an experience on his homeward journey that sent him down to the inn again the next night, and made him for a short time the most important figure upon the stage. Briefly the story he told was this.