'It's only six o'clock, miss. I shouldn't have come in and wakened you, only I thought I heard you call. You'd best go to sleep again; you're upset with all these doings, and no wonder.'
'I can't sleep, and I want to go to the mills,' declared Sarah.
But Naomi exclaimed in alarm, 'Impossible, miss! Don't you think of doing such a thing! Mr Howroyd won't hear of it, I know. Besides'—here Naomi paused, and added in a rather embarrassed manner, 'you can't, Miss Sarah.'
'I can't go to the mills—our own mills, Naomi? What do you mean? You are hiding something from me. Are they burnt down or damaged in any way?' asked Sarah anxiously.
'Not so far as I know, miss; but you can't go into them for all that. No one can,' repeated Naomi.
'Naomi, have you seen the mills to-day? Are the chimneys all standing just as usual?' demanded Sarah.
'Why, yes, to be sure they are, and smoking; and big fires they are making, too, for I saw red sparks coming out of one. Why, what's the matter, Miss Sarah? You must be getting downright nervous,' observed Naomi, for Sarah had started and given a little shiver at this last remark.
'It's nothing, only I had a horrid dream about one of the chimneys; but if you say you saw them standing, with nothing unusual about them, it's all right.' And Sarah gave a half-nervous laugh as she thought of the 'unusual' appearance they had in her dream. 'All the same, I'm going to get up; it's no use lying in bed when you can't sleep,' she continued.
While she was dressing, Sarah's thoughts recurred to the conversation she had just had with Naomi, and she suddenly remembered that the girl had never explained her mysterious statement that no one could go into Clay's Mills. So she rang her bell, and telling Naomi to do her hair, sat down on a chair while this process went on, and came to the point at once. 'I suppose father has barricaded himself and the men into the mills; but I could have got through all right,' she observed.
'The master has barricaded himself in; but the pickets set by the hands to guard the mills have barricaded every one else out, and they wouldn't let you pass if it was ever so, not for life or death, for it's been tried,' replied Naomi.