Trade had collapsed. King Cotton was discrowned; his subjects had become a nation of paupers; some of whom were begging their bread, all of whom were living chiefly on help from outside. There was a vast organisation kept up, chiefly by unpaid, voluntary toil, for discovering distress, and distributing relief. Thanshope had now added herself to the list of towns which had instituted Relief Committees, and Sebastian’s schools had been merged into the larger ones belonging to the public body. They had served as a sort of model or introduction, and the others were founded upon the same plan. He himself was one of the most powerful and active members of the committee, while Adrienne and Helena, from their previous experience, were in reality the head and front of the ladies’ committee, though duly subordinated in outward order to Mrs. Ponsonby, and one or two other dames of place and importance. But while the great complicated machine was working with such regularity and smoothness, so that it and its movements were praised by all who beheld them, what were those doing on whose behalf all this mechanism had been set a-going? What was happening in the thousands of homes whose most cherished hopes and traditions had to be given up and forsaken in this terrible emergency? In the one home in which we are interested it was going hardly enough. It was in the very beginning of the month, a bright, glaring, sunny May morning, to look upon, with a dry pitiless east wind blowing round the corners and sweeping down the shady side of the streets. It was the middle of the forenoon, and the Heywoods’ kitchen did not get the morning sun. There was no fire. Mary and her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Mitchell, took turns at having a fire, for the cooking of both households now was less extensive than it once had been, and each alternately undertook the responsibility of the other’s baking and boiling. This was the day on which Mrs. Mitchell had the fire; consequently Mary’s kitchen was all the colder from its bareness and its spotless neatness. She was sitting in the window, sewing. Myles was at the centre table with some books from the library before him, ostensibly reading--really gazing blankly at the page, and looking, as it is not good that a young man, or any man, should look--looking as men only do look when their affairs are in a very bad way.