The glass roof was acting like a greenhouse, the temperature on the top floor of the old mill was rising. As Noah walked the floor watching the girls chasing the machines he wished that he was once again a child back on his fathers estate. Chasing King cotton was much less fun than chasing Red Admirals. Heaven knew how the girls coped with the heat, even if they ran round half naked. As for the urchins that cleaned under the machines, they might as well be naked for all the scraps of clothing they were wearing. Noah knew times were bad in the cotton trade, and his father paid poorly. Hell he did not want to be here, but he had been told learn the trade or go without, old pater was a hard nut. One day Noah hoped to be free of his fathers noose, but today he had no choice but to except his fathers control. Perhaps one day soon things might be different.

The leeches seemed to say so, you could not go on bleeding someone like that, even if as the physician said it was letting the evil humours out. Pater had collapsed a week back, after Noah had lashed out at him, his father had fallen and hit his head on the grate. Now his muscles no longer seemed able to move his right leg and arm. Noah had not meant to hit him so hard, but when his father had struck the brightly coloured butterfly Noah had seen red. It was alright his father hitting him, but a defenceless butterfly.

The door at the end of the mill room opened, then Noah saw his mother, he briefly wondered why there were two peelers behind her. Then he turned and fled, it was a long way to Pickering, but at this moment a life on the ocean seemed better than one in the cells. It would be several years before Noah would find out about the thefts from the cashiers office at his fathers mill, or that his father lived for another four years. But Noah did met with Darwin when HMS Beagle rescued him from the site of a ship wreak off the coast of East Falkland. After this event Noah returned to England and arranged for the family mill to be sold. He went on to study Arachnids.