"Yes. Loom forty. I hope she has not left a large family."
"Nay, if there had been a big family, she would varry likely hev been at her loom today"—then there were a few softly spoken words, and John walked forward, but he could not forget how singularly the empty loom had appealed to him on that last morning he had walked through the mill with Greenwood. There are strange coincidences and links in events of which we know nothing at all—occult, untraceable altogether, material, yet having distinct influences not over matter but over some one mind or heart.
A little before closing time Greenwood said, "Julius Yorke will be spreading himself all over Hatton tonight. A word or two from thee, sir, might settle him a bit."
"I think you settled him very well last night."
"It suited me to do so. I like to threep a man
that is my equal in his head piece. Yorke is nobbut a hunchbacked dwarf and he talks a lot of nonsense, but he feels all he says. He's just a bit of crooked humanity on fire and talking at white heat."
"What was he talking about?"
"Rights and wrongs, of course. There was a good deal of truth in what he said, but he used words I didn't like; they came out of some blackguard's dictionary, so I told him to be quiet, and when he wouldn't be quiet, we sung him down with a verse out o' John Wesley's hymn-book."
"All right! You are a match for Yorke, Greenwood. I will leave him to you. I am very weary. The last two days have been hard ones."
There was a tone of pathos in John's words and voice and Greenwood realized it. He touched his cap, and turned away. "Married men hev their own tribulations," he muttered. "I hev had a heartache mysen all day long about the way Polly went on this morning. And her with such a good husband as I am!"