The mystery was cleared up at last. It was discovered that the ghost was only Sam Crompton "fashing himself over bits of wood and iron;" and Sam was pointed out as a "conjuror"--the cant term for inventor--when he walked through the town. The five years of labour and anxiety bore fruit in 1779, when the "mule-jenny" with its spindle carriage was finished and set to work. As its name indicates, it was an ingenious cross between the jenny and the water-frame, combining the best features of both with several novel ones, which rendered it a very valuable machine. Just as Crompton had put the finishing touches to his mule, the weavers and spinners broke out in open riot at Blackburn, and scoured the country with the cry, "Men, not machines;" breaking every machine they could lay hands on. To keep himself out of trouble and save his mule, Crompton took it to pieces, and hid it in the roof of the hall. When the storm had swept past, he brought it out, put it together, and began to use it in his daily work. The fine yarn he turned out made quite a sensation, and the fame of his invention spread far and wide. People came from all quarters to get a sight of it; and when denied admittance, brought ladders and harrows, and climbed up to the window of the room where it stood. One pertinacious fellow actually ensconced himself for several days in the cockloft, from which he watched Crompton at work in the room below, through a gimlet hole he bored in the ceiling. Crompton lost all patience with this constant espionage. "Why couldn't folk let him enjoy his machine by himself?" he asked. A friend, whose advice he asked, urged him not to think of taking out a patent, but to make a present of his invention to the community at large. Save me from my friends, Crompton might well have cried. Simple, guileless fellow that he was, he acted on his "friend's" advice, and on a number of manufacturers putting down their names for subscriptions varying from a guinea to a crown, threw open the invention to the world. When the time came for the subscriptions to be called in, some of the manufacturers actually were base enough to refuse payment of the paltry sums they had promised, and overwhelmed with abuse the man by the fruit of whose brain they were making their fortunes. When all the money was collected, it amounted to only L60, just as much as built Crompton a new machine, with no more than four spindles.