"Nice thing indeed; after I have married to get this money, and then not to be able to use it!"

His wife gave a little cry.

"It's a shame to say so," Charlie burst out st.u.r.dily.

Mr. Mulready's pa.s.sion found a vent. He leaped up and seized the boy by the collar and boxed his ears with all his force.

In an instant the fury which had been smoldering in Ned's breast for months found a vent. He leaped to his feet and struck Mr. Mulready a blow between the eyes which sent him staggering back against the wall; then he caught up the poker. The manufacturer with a snarl like that of an angry wild beast was about to rush at him, but Ned's att.i.tude as he stood, poker in hand, checked him.

"Stand back," Ned said threateningly, "or I will strike you. You coward and bully; for months I have put up with your tyrannizing over Charlie and Lucy, but touch either of them again if you dare. You think that you are stronger than I am--so you are ever so much; but you lay a finger on them or on me, and I warn you, if I wait a month for an opportunity I will pay you for it, if you kill me afterward."

Mrs. Mulready's screams had by this time brought the servants into the room, and they stood astonished at the spectacle.

Lucy crying bitterly had run to Ned and thrown her arms round him, begging him to be quiet. Charlie, hardly recovered from the heavy blows he had received, was crying too. Mr. Mulready as pale as death was glaring at Ned, while his wife had thrown herself between them. Mr.

Mulready was the first to recover himself.

"This is a nice spectacle," he said to the servants. "You see that boy has attacked me with the poker and might have murdered me. However, you can go now, and mind, no chattering about what you have seen.

"And now," he continued to Ned as the door closed behind the servants, "out of this house you go this day."

"You don't suppose I want to stay in your house," Ned said pa.s.sionately.

"You don't suppose that it's any pleasure to me to stop here, seeing you play the tyrant over my mother."

"Oh, Ned, Ned," Mrs. Mulready broke in, "how can you talk so!"

"It is true, mother, he is a tyrant to you as well as to every one else; but I don't mean to go, I mean to stop here to protect you and the children. He daren't turn me out; if he did, I would go and work in one of the mills, and what would the people of Marsden say then? What would they think of this popular, pleasant gentleman then, who has told his wife before her children that he married her for her money? They shall all know it, never fear, if I leave this house. I would have gone to Mr.

Simmonds and asked him to apply for a commission for me before now, for other fellows get it as young as I am; but I have made up my mind that it's my duty not to do so.

"I know he has been looking forward to my being out of the way, and his being able to do just what he likes with the others, but I ain't going to gratify him. It's plain to me that my duty at present is to take care of you all, and though G.o.d knows how I set my mind upon going into the army and being a soldier like my father, I will give it up if it means leaving Charlie here under him."

"And do you suppose, sir," Mr. Mulready asked with intense bitterness, "that I am going to keep you here doing nothing all your life, while you are pleased to watch me?"

"No, I don't," Ned replied. "I shall get a clerkship or something in one of the mills, and I shall have Charlie to live with me until he is old enough to leave school, and then I will go away with him to America or somewhere. As to mother, I can do nothing for her. I think my being here makes it worse for her, for I believe you tyrannize over her all the more because you think it hurts me. I know you hated me from the first just as I hated you. As for Lucy, mother must do the best she can for her. Even you daren't hit a girl."

"Oh, Ned, how can you go on so?" Mrs. Mulready wailed. "You are a wicked boy to talk so."

"All right, mother," Ned replied recklessly; "if I am, I suppose I am. I know in your eyes he can do no wrong. And I believe if he beat you, you would think that you deserved it."

So he flung himself down in his chair and continued his breakfast.

Mr. Mulready drank off his tea without sitting down, and then left the room without another word; in fact, as yet he did not know what to say.

Almost speechless with pa.s.sion as he was, he restrained himself from carrying out his threat and turning Ned at once from the house. Above all things he prized his position and popularity, and he felt that, as Ned had said, he would indeed incur a heavy odium by turning his wife's son from his doors. Captain Sankey's death had thrown almost a halo over his children. Mr. Mulready knew that he was already intensely unpopular among the operative cla.s.s, but he despised this so long as he stood well with the rest of the townsmen; but he dared not risk Ned's going to work as an ordinary hand in one of the factories; public opinion is always against stepfathers, and a.s.suredly this would be no exception. Hating him as he did, he dared not get rid of this insolent boy, who had struck and defied him. He cursed himself now with his rashness in letting his temper get the best of him and telling his wife openly that he had married her for her money; for this in Ned's hands would be a serious weapon against him.

That his wife's feelings were hurt he cared not a jot, but it would be an awkward thing to have it repeated in the town. Then there was this threatening letter; what was he to do about that? Other men had had similar warnings. Some had defied Captain Lud, and fortified their mills and held them. Many had had their property burned to the ground; some had been murdered. It wouldn't be a pleasant thing to drive about in the country knowing that at any moment he might be shot dead. His mill was some little distance out of the town; the road was dark and lonely. He dared not risk it.

Mr. Mulready was, like all tyrants, a coward at heart, and his face grew white again as he thought of the letter in his pocket. In the meantime Mrs. Mulready was alternately sobbing and upbraiding Ned as he quietly finished his breakfast. The boy did not answer, but continued his meal in dogged silence, and when it was over collected his books and without a word went off to school.

Weeks went on, and no outward change took place. Ned continued to live at home. Mr. Mulready never addressed him, and beyond helping him to food entirely ignored his presence. At mealtimes when he opened his lips it was either to snap at Charlie or Lucy, or to snarl at his wife, whose patience astonished Ned, and who never answered except by a smile or murmured excuse. The lad was almost as far separated from her now as from his stepfather. She treated him as if he only were to blame for the quarrel which had arisen. They had never understood each other, and while she was never weary of making excuses for her husband, she could make none for her son. In the knowledge that the former had much to vex him she made excuses for him even in his worst moods. His new machinery was standing idle, his business was getting worse and worse, he was greatly pressed and worried, and it was monstrous, she told herself, that at such a time he should be troubled with Ned's defiant behavior.

A short time before the school Christmas holidays Ned knocked at the door of Mr. Porson's study. Since the conversation which they had had when first Ned heard of his mother's engagement Mr. Porson had seen in the lad's altered manner, his gloomy looks, and a hardness of expression which became more and more marked every week, that things were going on badly. Ned no longer evinced the same interest in his work, and frequently neglected it altogether; the master, however, had kept silence, preferring to wait until Ned should himself broach the subject.

"Well, Sankey, what is it?" he asked kindly as the boy entered.

"I don't think it's any use my going on any longer, Mr. Porson."

"Well, Sankey, you have not been doing yourself much good this half, certainly. I have not said much to you about it, for it is entirely your own business: you know more than nineteen out of twenty of the young fellows who get commissions, so that if you choose to give up work it is your own affair."

"I have made up my mind not to go into the army," Ned said quietly.

Mr. Porson was silent a minute.

"I hope, my dear lad," he said, "you will do nothing hastily about this.

Here is a profession open to you which is your own choice and that of your father, and it should need some very strong and good reason for you to abandon it. Come let us talk the matter over together, my boy, not as a master and his pupil, but as two friends.

"You know, my boy, how thoroughly I have your interest at heart. If you had other friends whom you could consult I would rather have given you no advice, for there is no more serious matter than to say anything which might influence the career of a young fellow just starting in life. Terrible harm often results from well intentioned advice or opinions carelessly expressed to young men by their elders; it is a matter which few men are sufficiently careful about; but as I know that you have no friends to consult, Ned, and as I regard you with more than interest, I may say with affection, I think it would be well for you to tell me all that there is in your mind before you take a step which may wreck your whole life.

"I have been waiting for some months in hopes that you would open your mind to me, for I have seen that you were unhappy; but it was not for me to force your confidence."

"I don't know that there's much to tell," Ned said wearily. "Everything has happened just as it was certain it would do. Mulready is a brute; he ill treats my mother, he ill treats Charlie and Lucy, and he would ill treat me if he dared."

"All this is bad, Ned," Mr. Porson said gravely; "but of course much depends upon the amount of his ill treatment. I a.s.sume that he does not actively ill treat your mother."

"No," Ned said with an angry look in his face; "and he'd better not."

"Yes, Ned, he had better not, no doubt," Mr. Porson said soothingly; "but what I want to know, what it is essential I should know if I am to give you any advice worth having, is what you mean by ill treatment--is he rough and violent in his way with her? does he threaten her with violence? is he coa.r.s.e and brutal?"

"No," Ned said somewhat reluctantly; "he is not that, sir; he is always snapping and snarling and finding fault."

"That is bad, Ned, but it does not amount to ill treatment. When a man is put out in business and things go wrong with him it is unhappily too often his custom to vent his ill temper upon innocent persons; and I fancy from what I hear--you know in a little place like this every one's business is more or less known--Mr. Mulready has a good deal to put him out. He has erected new machinery and dare not put it to work, owing as I hear--for he has lain the doc.u.ments before the magistrates--for his having received threatening letters warning him against doing so. This is very trying to the man. Then, Ned, you will excuse my saying that perhaps he is somewhat tried at home. It is no pleasant thing for a man to have a young fellow like yourself in the house taking up an att.i.tude of constant hostility. I do not say that his conduct may or may not justify it; but you will not deny that from the first you were prepared to receive him as an enemy rather than as a friend. I heard a story some weeks ago in the town, which emanated no doubt from the servants, that you had actually struck him."

"He hit Charlie, sir," Ned exclaimed.

"That may be," Mr. Porson went on gravely; "and I have no doubt, Ned, that you considered then, and that you consider now, that you were acting rightly in interfering on behalf of your brother. But I should question much whether in such a matter you are the best judge. You unfortunately began with a very strong prejudice against this man; you took up the strongest att.i.tude of hostility to him; you were prepared to find fault with everything he said and did; you put yourself in the position of the champion of your mother, brother, and sister against him. Under such circ.u.mstances it was hardly possible that things could go on well. Now I suppose, Ned, that the idea which you have in your mind in deciding to give up the profession you have chosen, is that you may remain as their champion and protector here."

"Yes, sir," Ned said. "Father told me to be kind to mother, whatever happened."

"Quite so, my boy; but the question is, Are you being kind?"

Ned looked surprised.

"That you intend to be so, Ned, I am sure. The question is, Are you going the right way to work? Is this championship that you have taken upon yourself increasing her happiness, or is it not?"

Ned was silent.

"I do not think that it is, Ned. Your mother must be really fond of this man or she would not have married him. Do you think that it conduces to the comfort of her home to see the constant antagonism which prevails between you and him? Is it not the fact that this ill temper under which she suffers is the result of the irritation caused to him by your att.i.tude? Do you not add to her burden rather than relieve it?"

Ned was still silent. He had so thoroughly persuaded himself that he was protecting his mother, his brother, and sister from Mr. Mulready that he had never considered the matter in this light.