Now, in my young days I confess to a fondness for reading the works of Mr. Robert Owen, of Lanark, and, to be sure, we are all taught to believe in the brotherhood of man and to bear one another's burden, and that may mean that the strong should cheerfully earn the whole cake and give the better half of it to the weak, thankful to be able to do it. And I suppose in a perfect state a man will do his day's work just because it is his day's work, and be content to share and share alike with a brother who either can't or won't do his. But, alas! we don't live in a perfect state, and human nature will have a long way to travel before it ceases to be true that if you want to get the best out of a man set him to work for himself. Anyhow--I'm no philosopher--Jim and I toiled in those early days at Mitchell Mill, and for many a long year thereafter, like galley-slaves. We had a long row to hoe, and we knew it. And were there not Miriam and Ruth to cheer us when we despaired, and to lighten our toil by all the arts of loving and good women. Now, one day in mid-March, whom should we spy seated on a low wall near the mill dam but that queer, uncanny Burnplatter, that same Daft Billy who had fetched me from the watch-night service to the bedside of old Mother Sykes, and who, I had reasons for believing, had carried me to my father's door after Ephraim had left me for dead on Stanedge top. I could never quite get over a sort of shrinking from the man, but I knew that he loved Miriam as the hound loves its master, and hoped that for Miriam's sake he would do me no ill if he did me no good. So I went to him with outstretched hand--which he disregarded--and asked him to share the beef and bread and cheese and onions which Jim and I had brought in our handkerchief for our mid-day meal. "Aw want nowt to eit," he said, with, I thought, scant courtesy. "Aw want to speik to thee private." He scowled in the direction of poor Jim, and added, "Send yon' hulkin' fooil out o' earshot." I gave Jim a hint, and he took his tea-cake and pitcher to another part of the mill. "Now, what is it?" I asked anxiously. "Nothing wrong with Miriam?" "Not yetten." "But you fear harm to her?" "Aw shouldn't be here else. It's none for love o' you." I quite thought I could believe that. "Well, well?"--impatiently. "It's Eph.--an' them Bradburys. Leastwise, th' young 'un." "But Tom o' Bill's a married man, with a family at that--what can he want with Miriam?" "Oh! mostly to spite thee, aw reckon. He wants none o' th' lass. He's his hands full at whom; but he'd hit thee through Miriam if he can." Now that was a very long speech for the taciturn Burnplatter, and 'twere wearisome to tell at large how, bit by bit, like getting gold out of quartz, I got from Daft Billy the story he had to tell.