friction of heavy vessels and the testing of doubtful coins. But what article of household provision you failed to get at “Split’s” you might despair of purchasing anywhere nearer than Huddersfield itself. A candle rack ran round three sides of the shop, just above the counters, and the sickly odour of tallow pervaded all the spot, dominating even the smell of treacle and “shilling-oil” as the oil used for lamps was called. Flitches of bacon hung from the rafters; bags of flour and of oatmeal with open necks were propped up in corners. Bars of soap, piles of soft-stone and white stone, tins of tea and coffee, pats of butter, skins of lard, papers of blacking and black-lead, pots and pans, and brushes hard and soft, eggs and herrings, peas and beans and Indian corn for poultry, gridirons and porringers, thimbles and shoelaces, clogs and pocket-handkerchiefs—all these and sundry others were the articles of commerce retailed at fifty per cent, profit to a grateful public by Mr. Ephraim Thorpe. That public consisted for the most part of those employed in the neighbouring mills, and few were the families of the humbler sort entirely out of Ephraim’s debt. He was always willing to trust a man that he knew to be fairly sober and in fair work, and to his regular customers at the crisis of a funeral or a wedding, lend a guinea or so at the easy interest of sixpence in the pound per week; so long as the interest was paid regularly he never pressed for the principal. But woe betide any housewife who took her ready money to a rival tradesman, or ventured to go shopping at the flaunting stores of Huddersfield. The Court of Requests and the “Bum” were words of terrible portent, and Ephraim knew every trick of the law. He knew, too, the wages of every working family in the district how much they ought to spend when they bought in for the week, and how far it was safe to trust when work was slack or sickness rife and ready-money not forthcoming. Truly no lord of the manor in the good old days of dungeon-keep, thumb-screw and rack, was held more in awe than the red-headed, freckled, yellow-fanged, parchment-skinned, ferret-eyed “Split,” general dealer and deacon of the Baptist Flock that gathered at Aenon Chapel, Holmfirth, “the altar by the rushing waters.”

For Ephraim was as zealous in his chapel-going as in his shop-keeping. Sunday morning and afternoon saw him in his pew, dressed in sable doeskin, but with a subtle flavour of soap and chandlery exhaling from his pores. He rented a high, uncompromising pew, in which he could coop himself up and barricade himself from the non-elect. It was a capital sentinel-box, whence he could espy the gaps in the ranks of the faithful. He could note when Ned o’ Ben’s, or Bill o’ Sue’s 

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