“I will answer any questions that you may ask,” Ned said quietly, seating himself, while the magistrates' clerk dipped his pen in the ink and prepared to take notes of his statement.
“Is it the case that the Luddites made an attack upon your mill the night before last?”
“It is true, sir.”
“Will you please state the exact circumstances.”
“There is not much to tell,” Ned said quietly. “I have for some time been expecting an attack, having received many threatening letters. I have, therefore, made a habit of sleeping in the mill, and a month ago I got in twelve barrels of powder from Huddersfield. Before going to bed of a night I always pile these in the middle of the room where the looms are, which is the first as you enter. I have bells attached to the shutters and doors to give me notice of any attempt to enter. The night before last I was awoke by hearing one of them ring, and looking out of the window made out a crowd of two or three hundred men outside. They began to batter the door, so, taking a brace of pistols which I keep in readiness by my bed, I went down and took my place by the powder. When they broke down the door and entered I just told them that if they came any further I should fire my pistol into one of the barrels, the head of which I had knocked out, and, as I suppose they saw that I meant to do it, they went off. That is all I have to tell, so far as I know.”
The clerk's pen ran swiftly over the paper as Ned quietly made his statement. Then there was a silence for a minute or two.
“And did you really mean to carry out your threat, Mr. Sankey?”
“Certainly,” Ned said.
“But you would, of course, have been killed yourself.”
“Naturally,” Ned said dryly; “but that would have been of no great consequence to me or any one else. As the country was lately about to take my life at its own expense it would not greatly disapprove of my doing so at my own, especially as the lesson to the Luddites would have been so wholesale a one that the services of the troops in this part of the country might have been dispensed with for some time.”