Luke and Bill Swinton were down at the factory an hour before the usual time. The assailants had for the most part come over from Huddersfield, but many of the men from Varley had been among them. The terror which Ned's attitude had inspired had been so great that the secret was less well kept than usual, and as soon as people were astir the events of the night were known to most in the village. The moment the news reached the ears of Luke and Bill they hurried down to the mill without going in as usual for their mug of beer and bit of bread and cheese at the “Brown Cow.” The sight of the shattered door at once told them that the rumors they had heard were well founded. They knocked loudly upon it. “Hullo!” Ned shouted, rousing himself from his slumbers; “who is there? What are you kicking up all this row about?” “It's oi, Maister Ned, oi and Bill, and glad oi am to hear your voice. It's true, then, they haven't hurt thee?” “Not a bit of it,” Ned said as he moved the supports of the door. “I think they got the worst of it.” “If so be as what oi ha' heard be true you may well say that, Maister Ned. Oi hear as you ha' gived 'em such a fright as they won't get over in a hurry. They say as you was a-sitting on the top of a heap of gunpowder up to the roof with a pistol in each hand.” “Not quite so terrible as that, Luke; but the effect would have been the same. Those twelve barrels of powder you see there would have blown the mill and all in it into atoms.” “Lord, Maister Ned,” Bill said, “where didst thou get that powder, and why didn't ye say nowt about it? Oi ha' seen it up in the office, now oi thinks on it. Oi wondered what them barrels piled up in a corner and covered over wi' sacking could be; but it warn't no business o' mine to ax.” “No, Bill, I did not want any of them to know about it, because these things get about, and half the effect is lost unless they come as a surprise; but I meant to do it if I had been driven to it, and if I had, King Lud would have had a lesson which he would not have forgotten in a hurry. Now, Luke, you and Bill had better help me carry them back to their usual place. I don't think they are likely to be wanted again.” “That they won't be,” Luke said confidently; “the Luddites ull never come near this mill agin, not if thou hast twenty toimes as many machines. They ha' got a froight they won't get over. They told me as how some of the chaps at Varley was so freighted that they will be a long toime afore they gets round. Oi'll go and ask tonight how that Methurdy chap, the blacksmith, be a feeling. Oi reckon he's at the bottom on it. Dang un for a mischievous rogue! Varley would ha' been quiet enough without him. Oi be wrong if oi shan't see him dangling from a gibbet one of these days, and a good riddance too.”