It was my last night in the Mill House for many a long year. The cry of the wind in the chimney and the sound of the falling water put a new prayer in my heart and a solemn sense of the dearness of my old home, not to be lost in care and toil, in pleasures and palaces. Next day I returned the horruck to Jo, so as to let her know, plainly, that I loved her also. STAGE IX.--IN WHICH WE MEET THE CAPTAIN OF THE NEW ARMY [Illustration: 9230] GOT to Rushwater late at night, and reported at eight next morning at the factory office. Mr. McCarthy had not arrived, and I went down to Pearl's shop in the y friend sat by a lathe. He rose and embraced me with his one arm. Near us a carpenter was working at a long bench. The Pearl put on an apron and began to heat up his forge. “How are you getting along here?” I asked. “I am surprised at my success,” he answered. “I have made myself the most hated man in Rushwater. I am abhorred, hissed at, despised. I deprive honest labor of its occupation and grind the faces o' the poor.” “How is that?” “Well, I have invented a machine that does the work of ten men, and does it better than they did. Now, the ten had to find other jobs, and they didn't like it. Did you ever pull a hen off her perch late in the evening? You know what a noise it makes--all the others get scairt an' begin to holler. Well, you pull a man off his perch and you get the same sort of a ruction. I happen to be the leg-grabber. I didn't mean to do any harm. The purpose o' the factory is to make the goods as cheap as possible, and I was employed to help solve the problem. I've got our wheels on the main shaft, and God's draft-horse is whirlin' 'em.” He took me into the sub-cellar, where a rush of water struck the buckets of a turbine and made it shriek as it sped on its pivot, and the power of a hundred horses went up the shaft. Soon a boy came down to find me, and said that Mr. McCarthy had arrived. I went to the office at once, and within half an hour had begun my new work. The hand-made gentleman had secured for me a copy of Isaac Pitman's treatise, and I spent all my leisure in the acquisition of “soundhand,” or shorthand, as we now call it. I enjoyed my work, and saw at once that I was likely to do some good in it. Mr. McCarthy wished me to spend a few months in a business college, as much in his interest as my own, he said to me, and in New York he made arrangements to that end. “I want you to get the pace of the city,” he said to me, “and learn how to score up in proper style. There's a lot of very polished people down here. See how they dress and behave themselves morning, noon, and night. It will be a help to both of us.” We went to the big city that week, I to begin my studies, and he to have a talk with the great Mr. Vanderbilt. The Pearl had said to the hand-made gentleman, when we were leaving Rush water: