'By Jove!' he said, sinking into his chair again. 'Firth Vale--Firth Vale. That's in Derbyshire. Ah me!' He thrust his feet forward again to the warmth, and leaning back gazed long into the fire, but not quite so complacently as he had done before it had occurred to him to make that journey across the room to his great-coat. CHAPTER III. THE NEW MASTERS. The funeral was over, and Thornsett Mill was closed for the day. Fortunately the 'Spotted Cow' was not closed, so that the majority of the hands did not find themselves without resources. Added to the subtle pleasure which so many derive from drinking small beer in a sanded kitchen furnished with oak benches, there was to-day the excitement of discussing a great event, for to the average mind of Thornsett the death and burial of old Richard Ferrier were great events indeed. And then there appears to be something inherent in the nature of a funeral which produces intense and continued thirst in all persons connected, however remotely, with the ceremony. So John Bolt, the landlord, had his hands pretty full, and the state of the till was so satisfactory that it was a really praiseworthy sacrifice to the decencies of society for him to persist in not shortening by one fraction of an inch the respectfully long face which he had put on in the morning as appropriate to the occasion. 'Well, for my part, I'm sorry he's gone,' he said, drawing himself a pot of that tap which seemed best calculated to assist moral reflections. 'That I am! He was always a fair dealer, if he wasn't a giving one.' 'He was more a havin' nor a givin' one,' said old Bill Murdoch. 'Givin' don't build mills, my lad, nor yet muck up two acres o' good pasture wi' bits o' flowers wi' glass windows all over 'em. I never seen sic foolin'.' 'Surely a man's a right to do what he will with his own,' ventured a meek-looking man, who had himself a few pounds laid by, and felt acutely the importance of leaving unchallenged the rights of property. 'I'm none so sure o' that,' remarked Bill, who had a conviction which is shared by a few more of us, that one's superiority shows itself naturally and unmistakably in one's never agreeing with any statement whatever which is advanced by anyone else. 'There'll be more flowers than ever now, if Mr Roland has his way,' said Sigley the meek. 'D'ye think, now, Sigley, he'll be like to get that where Mr Richard is?' asked Bill. 'Mr Roland thinks too much o' flowers and singin', and book learnin', to give much time to getten o' his own way.' 'Mr Roland may be this, or he may be that,' Potters, the village grocer, observed, with the air of one clearly stating a case, 'but he can get his way where he cares to.' 'Tha's fond o' saying words as might mean owt--or nowt, for that matter. Can't tha say what tha does mean?' 'Tha'd know what I mean if tha weren't too blind to see owt. How about Alice Hatfield?'