Sleep came to Margaret long after she lay down on her bed that night; there was much to think upon. To visit Bessy was right and her charitable duty but to diminish her time with her mother, who was, to Margaret's thinking, ailing seriously, this was a painful dilemma. Despite knowledge of the next day's appointment, she tossed in her bed and it was not until the clock struck one that Margaret finally slept.

The morning sun fighting its way through the omnipresent cloud hovering over Milton woke Margaret. After dressing, she went down to break her fast and continue her contemplations of the night previous. A year ago, or when she first returned to Helstone and her family, and first became silently conscious of the querulousness in her mother's temper, she would have groaned bitterly over the idea of a long illness to be borne in a strange place, with diminished comforts on every side of the home life. But with the increase of serious and just ground of complaint, a new kind of patience had sprung up in her mother's mind. She was gentle and quiet in intense bodily suffering, almost in proportion as she had been restless and depressed when there had been no real cause for grief. Margaret longed for time, quite a length of time, in which to silently plan. But it was not to be, as she was due in three hours to appear and follow Mrs. Thornton as she pointed out what was great and important in her son's mill.

'Margaret,' her mother queried, 'Was not today fixed for you to call upon Mrs. Thornton?'

'Mrs. Thornton?' asked Mr. Hale, 'Are you to visit with Mrs. Thornton? I should like to accompany you.'

'She is to show me through Marlborough Mills,' Margaret answered, 'Surely, Papa, she would not begrudge you the time.'

'Ah, the mill! I have so wanted to see myself the wonderful machines of which Mr. Thornton speaks.'

And so it was, that both Margaret and her father found themselves knocking at the lodge-door at the appointed time. It was like a common garden-door; on one side of it were great closed gates for the ingress and egress of lorries and wagons. The lodge-keeper admitted them into a great oblong yard, on one side of which were offices for the transaction of business; on the opposite, an immense many-windowed mill, whence proceeded the continual clank of machinery and the long groaning roar of the steam-engine, enough to deafen those who lived within the enclosure. Mrs. Thornton was standing inside of the gate, dressed in a spotless black silk and adorned by snow white lace. She offered a small nod toward both Hales and advanced toward them.

'Mr. Hale, I am pleased to find you joining us on our tour today,' stated she with stately dignity.

'Mrs. Thornton, it is merely an answer to a desire of mine to view your son's work. He has spoken so often of his machines and their grandness that I had to come.'

Mrs. Thornton was decidedly pleased by this response and again inclined her head. 'It is excellent to find that you appreciate my son's endeavors, as he values the hours he spends with you.' She moved in the direction of a staircase, which led by a heavy door into the interior of the mill. Mr. Hale and Margaret promptly followed her, both curious to see the interior of the highly touted and extremely noisy manufactory. The noise was no less once inside of the large edifice and only seemed to increase. Margaret was fascinated by the sheer power put forth by the rows upon rows of great metal spiders, constantly spinning and moving while attended by men, women and children. Her father was struck speechless, overwhelmed by the scale of the room and its inhabitants. Margaret tightened her hold upon her father's arm to provide him a steadying influence. He patted her hand lightly and in a low voice murmured, 'It is more than one can comprehend.'

After sighting several other rooms of equal size and occupation, the three turned back and exited the mill by the same door through which they had entered. Margaret said, 'Mrs. Thornton, I would like to thank you for your patience today in providing my father and myself, strangers to Milton and to the North, with an intimate view of Mr. Thornton's mill.'

Mrs. Thornton was too much surprised by Margaret's statement to hide her emotion for a moment but then calmly replied, 'Miss Hale, it was an honor to escort you and your father.'

Mr. Hale then put in, 'Mrs. Thornton, we should like to return your call tomorrow. Would that suit your plans?'

She answered, 'Certainly. Our home is across the courtyard from the mill,' and she pointed with a steady hand toward a handsome stone-coped house,-blackened, to be sure, by the smoke, but with paint, windows, and steps kept scrupulously clean. It was evidently a house which had been built some fifty or sixty years. The stone facings-the long, narrow windows, and the number of them-the flights of steps up to the front door, ascending from either side, and guarded by railing-all witnessed to its age. Margaret only wondered why people who could afford to live in so good a house, and keep it in such perfect order, did not prefer a much smaller dwelling in the country, or even some suburb; not in the continual whirl and din of the factory.

'We shall then see you on the morrow,' Mr. Hale said and bid the lady farewell.

That evening, Mr. Hale being absent, her mother began to talk to her about her brother Frederick, the very subject on which Margaret had longed to ask questions, and almost the only one on which her timidity overcame her natural openness. The more she wanted to hear about him, the less likely she was to speak.

'Oh, Margaret, it was so windy last night! It came howling down the chimney in our room! I could not sleep. I never can when there is such a terrible wind. I got into a wakeful habit when poor Frederick was at sea; and now, even if I don't waken all at once, I dream of him in some stormy sea, with great, clear, glass-green walls of waves on either side his ship, but far higher than her very masts, curling over her with that cruel, terrible white foam, like some gigantic crested serpent. It is an old dream, but it always comes back on windy nights, till I am thankful to waken, sitting straight and stiff up in bed with my terror. Poor Frederick! He is on land now, so wind can do him no harm. Though I did think it might shake down some of those tall chimneys.'

'Where is Frederick now, mamma? Our letters are directed to the care of Messrs. Barbour, at Cadiz, I know; but where is he himself?'

'I can't remember the name of the place, but he is not called Hale; you must remember that, Margaret. Notice the F. D. in every corner of the letters. He has taken the name of Dickenson. I wanted him to have been called Beresford, to which he had a kind of right, but your father thought he had better not. He might be recognized, you know, if he were called by my name.'

'Mamma,' said Margaret, 'I was at Aunt Shaw's when it all happened; and I suppose I was not old enough to be told plainly about it. But I should like to know now, if I may-if it does not give you too much pain to speak about it.'

'Pain! No,' replied Mrs. Hale, her cheek flushing. 'It is pain to think that perhaps I may never see my darling boy again. Or else he did right, Margaret. They may say what they like, but I have his own letters to show, and I'll believe him, though he is my son, sooner than any court-martial on earth. Go to my little cabinet, dear, and in the second left-hand drawer you will find a packet of letters.'

Margaret went. There were the yellow, sea-stained letters, with the peculiar fragrance which ocean letters have. Margaret carried them back to her mother, who untied the silken string with trembling fingers, and, examining their dates, she gave them to Margaret to read.

Margaret slowly read the letter, half illegible through the fading of the ink. It might be-it probably was—a statement of Captain Reid's imperiousness in trifles, very much exaggerated by the narrator, who had written it while fresh and warm from the scene of altercation. Some sailors being aloft in the main-topsail rigging, the captain had ordered them to race down, threatening the hindmost with the cat-of-nine-tails. He who was the farthest on the spar, feeling the impossibility of passing his companions, and yet passionately dreading the disgrace of the flogging, threw himself desperately down to catch a rope considerably lower, failed, and fell senseless on deck. He only survived for a few hours afterwards, and the indignation of the ship's crew was at boiling point when young Hale wrote.

'But we did not receive this letter till long, long after we heard of the mutiny. Poor Fred! I dare say it was a comfort to him to write it even though he could not have known how to send it, poor fellow! And then we saw a report in the papers-that's to say, long before Fred's letter reached us-of an atrocious mutiny having broken out on board the Russell – that was Fred's boat, and that the mutineers had remained in possession of the ship, which had gone off, it was supposed, to be a pirate; and that Captain Reid was sent adrift in a boat with some men-officers or something-whose names were all given, for they were picked up by a West-Indian steamer. Oh, Margaret! How your father and I turned sick over that list, when there was no name of Frederick Hale. We thought it must be some mistake; for poor Fred was such a fine fellow, only perhaps rather too passionate; and we hoped that the name of Carr, which was in the list, was a misprint for that of Hale-newspapers are so careless. And towards post-time the next day, papa set off to walk to Southampton to get the papers; and I could not stop at home, so I went to meet him. He was very late-much later than I thought he would have been; and I sat down under the hedge to wait for him. He came at last, his arms hanging loose down, his head sunk, and walking heavily along, as if every step was a labor and a trouble. Margaret, I see him now.'

'Don't go on, mamma. I can understand it all,' said Margaret, leaning up caressingly against her mother's side, and kissing her hand.

'I think, Margaret,' Mrs. Hale continued, after a pause, in a weak, trembling, exhausted voice, 'I am glad of it-I am prouder of Frederick standing up against injustice, than if he had been simply a good officer. It was not for himself, or his own injuries, he rebelled; but he would speak his mind to Captain Reid, and so it went on from bad to worse; and you see, most of the sailors stuck by Frederick.'

'I am sure I am,' said Margaret, in a firm, decided tone. 'Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used-not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.'

'For all that, I wish I could see Frederick once more-just once. He was my first baby, Margaret.' Mrs. Hale spoke wistfully, and almost as if apologizing for the yearning, craving wish, as though it were a depreciation of her remaining child. But such an idea never crossed Margaret's mind. She was thinking how her mother's desire could be fulfilled.