“There is not much to tell,” Ned said quietly. “I have for some time been expecting an attack, having received many threatening letters. I have, therefore, made a habit of sleeping in the mill, and a month ago I got in twelve barrels of powder from Huddersfield. Before going to bed of a night I always pile these in the middle of the room where the looms are, which is the first as you enter. I have bells attached to the shutters and doors to give me notice of any attempt to enter. The night before last I was awoke by hearing one of them ring, and looking out of the window made out a crowd of two or three hundred men outside. They began to batter the door, so, taking a brace of pistols which I keep in readiness by my bed, I went down and took my place by the powder. When they broke down the door and entered I just told them that if they came any further I should fire my pistol into one of the barrels, the head of which I had knocked out, and, as I suppose they saw that I meant to do it, they went off. That is all I have to tell, so far as I know.” The clerk's pen ran swiftly over the paper as Ned quietly made his statement. Then there was a silence for a minute or two. “And did you really mean to carry out your threat, Mr. Sankey?” “Certainly,” Ned said. “But you would, of course, have been killed yourself.” “Naturally,” Ned said dryly; “but that would have been of no great consequence to me or any one else. As the country was lately about to take my life at its own expense it would not greatly disapprove of my doing so at my own, especially as the lesson to the Luddites would have been so wholesale a one that the services of the troops in this part of the country might have been dispensed with for some time.” “Did you recognize any of the men concerned?” “I am glad to say I did not,” Ned replied. “Some of them were masked. The others were, so far as I could see among such a crowd of faces in a not very bright light, all strangers to me.” “And you would not recognize any of them again were you to see them?” “I should not,” Ned replied. “None of them stood out prominently among the others.” “You speak, Mr. Sankey,” Mr. Thompson said, “as if your sympathies were rather on the side of these men, who would have burned your mill, and probably have murdered you, than against them.” “I do not sympathize with the measures the men are taking to obtain redress for what they regard as a grievance; but I do sympathize very deeply with the amount of suffering which they are undergoing from the introduction of machinery and the high prices of provisions; and I am not surprised that, desperate as they are, and ignorant as they are, they should be led astray by bad advice. Is there any other question that you wish to ask me?”