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Poultry of all kinds abounded in the mill-yard, where there were ample means of livelihood for them strewed on the ground; but not content with this, the miller took out handfuls of corn from the sacks, and threw liberally to the cocks and hens that ran almost under his feet in their eagerness.
He is the manager of a cotton mill in that quarter, and he is well known and much respected among the working people. When we entered the mill-yard, all was quiet there, and the factory was still and silent. But through the office window we could see the man we wanted. He was accompanied by one of the proprietors of the mill, turning over the relief books of the ward.
It was a mile to the mill, and in how many minutes Jerry covered the distance he never knew, but he pulled up short in the mill-yard, to find that he could go no farther; for the waters were well out beyond, and went swinging round a curve at a terrific rate, the river being narrowed here by the piers, buttresses, and piles upon which the mill-buildings had been reared.
The working life of one of these men is not over ten years, B says. A decade of this intense heat, compared to which a breath of outdoor air in the close mill-yard, with the midsummer sun in the nineties, seems chilly, wears a man out "only fit for the boneyard then, sir," was the laconic estimate of an intelligent boss whom I questioned on the subject.
There was nothing but the old millstones stealable, and they stood here and there where they had been leaned against tower and wall; and at ten minutes to five, after noting that the sun was shining brightly, Sam went back to his uncle and called him, and at half-past five they went together to the mill-yard, where the footprints were pointed out.
The two at once went forth to organize opposition. When the attacking party reached the mill-yard, it found the boss and the foreman standing alone on the saw-dust, revolvers drawn. Daly traced a line with his toe. "The first man that crosses that line gets it," said he. They knew he meant what he said. An instant's pause ensued, while the big man and the little faced a mob.
Next day Bryce Cardigan, riding the top log on the end truck of a long train just in from Cardigan's woods in Township Nine, dropped from the end of the log as the train crawled through the mill-yard on its way to the log-dump. He hailed Buck Ogilvy, where the latter stood in the door of the office. "Big doings up on Little Laurel Creek this morning, Buck." "Do tell!" Mr. Ogilvy murmured morosely.
And now on the morning after the meeting, when he walked into the mill-yard, while some looked on him with the sort of wonder with which a crowd would gape at some strange animal, the like of which they had neither seen nor heard of before, others began to assail him with gibes and taunts and coarse would-be witticisms.
Marlborough Street itself was the focus of all those human eyes, that betrayed intensest interest of various kinds; some fierce with anger, some lowering with relentless threats, some dilated with fear, or imploring entreaty; and, as Margaret reached the small side-entrance by the folding doors, in the great dead wall of Marlborough mill-yard and waited the porter's answer to the bell, she looked round and heard the first long far-off roll of the tempest; saw the first slow-surging wave of the dark crowd come, with its threatening crest, tumble over, and retreat, at the far end of the street, which a moment ago, seemed so full of repressed noise, but which now was ominously still; all these circumstances forced themselves on Margaret's notice, but did not sink down into her pre-occupied heart.
The same seeker, who was so fired by the sight of his eyes, looking out from a mill-yard or a shoe-shop on the many-colored activity of his kind, who ran such a round of arts and sciences, pursuing the very secret of his being in each new enterprise, is now discontented with all that has been done. He begins again to look forward, he becomes a prophet, instead of the historian he was.
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