The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-08-03

would those dresses fit you. Patience?"
"They might"
well, try them IN"
81 know they will fit me without trying
them on"
How do you know that?'
Because Miss Wagstaf and / are OF the
same size and figure
But you are far the handsomer woman,
Patience"
Perhaps; but what has that to do with
it?"
why, just this. I mean you 10 be mar
ried in those clothes. Patience. i meant
to have married you long ago; but !
didn't for one reason or another. We
needn't go into that now. I've got a license,
and your name is in ii. We can now be
married any day you like. And here's the
wedding clothes ready. They're mine; l
was to pay for them. And. being mine,
they are yours"
Then Patience, belying her name, turned
round and spoke her mind, and this brutal
and imperturbable man was dismayed for
the first time in his life.
1t was a new sensation, but ii went no
deeper than his other sensations; so he
turned ava from an incomprehensible
shower of reproaches, and thought he
would go and have it out with somebody
at the mill. Who was IL TO be? He went
at a tearing pace through rooms full of
s~pindles, long rows of them on each side
of what was called 1.-THE Alley" He tore
through the carding rooms. where large
cylinders, covered by thousands of little.
wiry. glittering teeth were tearing the raw
flax into the requisite state of looseness.
Nothing whatever wrong here. Nobody
to fall upon. Nobody to dismiss for duties
he had not neglected. Everywhere the
whirr OF many wheels; but no desirable
victim In any direction whatever.
Then he remembered. Something had
been wrong with one of the huge water
wheels. 1t might have been the merest
accident; but he would find that out for
himself. SO he went down the lift which
communicated between story and story,
until he came TO the very foundations Of
the mill. There was the water wheel. in
what seemed a vast, cold cavern, with a
sound of rushing waters underneath.
But the wheel was no longer revolving.
He had forgotten that the dinner hour was
approaching as he went down the lift.
When ne arrived in this gloomy place,
where only the sound of waters was heard,
the wheel was locked and still.
The anger grew in his heart against
the man who was guilty only Of a wholly
imaginary offense. He would wait for him.
The dinner hour began at II; it would con-
clude at l.. Yes, he would be there when
that unconscious offender returned TO his
work.
He wandered about the vague. tremen-
dous, awe-inspiring room. with its gigantic
wheel standing there silent. He seemed
never TO have known so much before as to
how the s~pindles upstairs were sent upon
their rapid swirl. This was how the Yaro
helped them, he thought.
Then we went and leant against the
wheel and listened TO the rush of the IN
impeded waters underneath, and his mind
wandered off to the scene with Patience
Morton. What could the woman mean?
He forgot the flight of time. The dinner
hour was at an end.
Why, the wheel was moving! He
shrieked. The mar on whom he had in
tended TO vent his wrath lad not noticed
his presence, and had unlocked the vast
piece of machinery just as the clock struci,
1. He was doing his ordinary duty in his
ordinary way.
And as John Starberry shrieked the whec'
bore him d~ownwards. and bruised and BROKE
him, and tossed him iato the hur. ying
stream which was c~oursiny down between
high walls to the Yarc; and when he wa.
seen again it was only as a mangled corpse
dragged out of the weir which crossed the
river at a dozen miles below Iarebridgc.
ICopYrisht. 1902