This proposal was carried out with all John's wisdom and kindness. He kept the conversation on the mill or on subjects relating to Harry's proposed journey until there was a sudden silence which for a moment or two no one appeared able to break. It was Mrs. Hatton who did so, and with a woman's instinct she plunged at once into a subject too sacred to dispute.
"My dear Harry," she said, in her clear vibrant voice, "my dear lad, John and I have just been talking of Wesley and how he came to light our hearthstone. You see, poor Squire Yates' fire went out last night."
"
"It did, my dear. Yates has no son, he is old and forgetful, and his nephew, who is only a Ramsby, was at Thornton market race, and nobody thought of the fire, and so out it went. They do say the squire is dying today. Well, then, Hatton Hall has two sons to guard her hearth, and I want to tell you, Harry, how our fire was saved not thirty years ago. Your grandfather was then growing poor and poorer every year, and with a heavy heart he was think, think, thinking of some plan to save the dear old home.
"One morning your father was walking round the Woodleigh meadows, for he thought if we sold them, and the Woodleigh house, we might put off further trouble for a while and give Good Fortune time to turn round and find a way to help us. And as he was walking and thinking Ezra Topham met him. Now, then, Ezra and your father were chief friends, even from their boyhood, and their fathers before them good friends, and indeed, as you know the Yorkshire way in friendship, it might go back of that and that again. And Ezra said these very words,
"'Stephen, I'm going to America. My heart and hands were never made for trading and cotton-spinning. I hev been raised on the land. I hev lived on the land and eaten and drunk what the land gave me. All my forefathers did the same, and the noise and smell of these new-fangled factories takes
the heart out of me. I hev a bit of brass left, and while I hev it I am going to buy me a farm where good land is sold by the acre and not by feet and inches. Now, then, I'll sell thee my mill, and its fifty looms, and heppen it may do cheerfully for thee what it will not do anyway for me. Will tha buy it?'"
"Poor chap!" interrupted Harry. "I know just how he felt. I am sorry for him."
"You needn't be anything of that sort, Harry. He is a big landowner now and a senator and a millionaire. So save thy pity for someone that needs it. As I was saying, he offered to sell his mill to thy father and thy father snapped at the offer, and it was settled there and then as they stood in Woodleigh meadows."