e in for it," said Mr. Slocum the next morning, "put
the case to them squarely."

Mr. Slocum's vertebrae had stiffened over night.

"Leave that to me, sir," Richard replied. "I have been shaping out
in my mind a little speech which I flatter myself will cover the
points. They have brought this thing upon themselves, and we are
about to have the clearest of understandings. I never saw the men
quieter."

"I don't altogether admire that. It looks as if they hadn't any
doubt as to the issue."

"The clearest-headed have no doubt; they know as well as you and I
do the flimsiness of those resolutions. But the thick heads are in a
fog. Every man naturally likes his pay increased; if a simple fellow
is told five or six hundred times that his wages ought to be raised,
the idea is so agreeable and insidious that by and by he begins to
believe himself grossly underpaid, though he may be getting twice
what he is worth. He doesn't reason about it; that's the last thing
he'll do for you. In this mood he lets himself be flown away by the
breath of some loud-mouthed demagogue, who has no interest in the
matter beyond hearing his own talk and passing round the hat after
the meeting is over. That is what has happened to our folks below.
But they _are_ behaving handsomely."

"Yes, and I don't like it."

Since seven o'clock the most unimpeachable decorum had reigned in
the workshops. It was now nine, and this brief dialogue had occurred
between Mr. Slocum and Richard on the veranda, just as the latter was
on the point of descending into the yard to have his talk with the
men.

The workshops--or rather the shed in which the workshops were, for
it was one low structure eighteen or twenty feet wide and open on the
west side--ran the length of the yard, and with the short extension
at the southerly end formed the letter L. There were no partitions,
an imaginary line separating the different gangs of workers. A person
standing at the head of the building could make himself heard more or
less distinctly in the remotest part.

The grating lisp of the wet saws eating their way into the marble
boulder, and the irregular quick taps of the seventy or eighty
mallets were not suspended as Richard took his stand beside a tall
funereal urn at the head of the principal workshop. After a second's
faltering he rapped smartly on the lip of the urn with the key of
his studio-door.

Instantly every arm appeared paralyzed, and the men stood
motionl