The stronger force of capital had withdrawn from the league; the weaker one, labor, was turned into an utter helplessness of idleness.  There was nothing to be done; you cannot rebel against a shut-down, you can only submit.

A week later the great wheel stopped early on the last day of work.  Almost everyone left his special charge of machinery in good order, oiled and cleaned and slackened with a kind of affectionate lingering care, for one person loves his machine as another loves his horse.  Even little Maggie pushed her bobbin-box into a safe place near the overseer’s desk and tipped it up and dusted it out with a handful of waste.  At the foot of the long winding stairs Mrs. Kilpatrick was putting away her broom, and she sighed as she locked the closet door; she had known hard times before.  “They’ll be wanting me with odd jobs; we’ll be after getting along some way,” she said with satisfaction.

“March is a long month, so it is—­there’ll be plinty time for change before the ind of it,” said Mary Cassidy hopefully.  “The agent will be thinking whatever can he do; sure he’s very ingenious.  Look at him how well he persuaded the directors to l’ave off wit’ making cotton cloth like everybody else, and catch a chance wit’ all these new linings and things!  He’s done very well, too.  There bees no sinse in a shut-down anny way, the looms and cards all suffers and the bands all slacks if they don’t get stiff.  I’d sooner pay folks to tind their work whatever it cost.”

“’Tis true for you,” agreed Mrs. Kilpatrick.

“What’ll ye do wit’ the shild, now she’s no chance of pay, any more?” asked Mary relentlessly, and poor Maggie’s eyes grew dark with fright as the conversation abruptly pointed her way.  She sometimes waked up in misery in Mrs. Kilpatrick’s warm bed, crying for fear that she was going to be sent back to the poorhouse.

“Maggie an’ me’s going to kape together awhile yet,” said the good old woman fondly.  “She’s very handy for me, so she is.  We ’on’t part with ’ach other whativer befalls, so we ’on’t,” and Maggie looked up with a wistful smile, only half reassured.  To her the shut-down seemed like the end of the world.

Some of the French people took time by the forelock and boarded the midnight train that very Saturday with all their possessions.  A little later two or three families departed by the same train, under cover of the darkness between two days, without stopping to pay even their house rent.  These mysterious flittings, like that of the famous Tartar tribe, roused a suspicion against their fellow countrymen, but after a succession of such departures almost everybody else thought it far cheaper to stay among friends.  It seemed as if at any moment the great mill wheels might begin to turn, and the bell begin to ring, but day after day the little town was still and the bell tolled the hours one after another as if it were Sunday.  The mild spring weather came on and the women sat