get through. I shall not detain you much
longer, as the parson says before he has reached the middle of his
sermon.

"What I say now, I was charged to make particularly clear to you.
It is this: In future Mr. Slocum intends to run Slocum's Yard
himself. Neither you, nor I, nor the Association will be allowed to
run it for him. [Sensation.] Until now the Association has tied him
down to two apprentices a year. From this hour, out, Mr. Slocum will
take on, not two, or twenty, but two hundred apprentices if the
business warrants it."

The words were not clearly off Richard's lips when the foreman of
the shop in which he was speaking picked up a couple of small drills,
and knocked them together with a sharp click. In an instant the men
laid aside their aprons, bundled up their tools, and marched out of
the shed two by two, in dead silence. That same click was repeated
almost simultaneously in the second shop, and the same evolution took
place. Then click, click, click! went the drills, sounding fainter
and fainter in the distant departments; and in less than three
minutes there was not a soul left in Slocum's Yard except the Orator
of the Day.

Richard had anticipated some demonstration, either noisy or
violent, perhaps both; but this solemn, orderly desertion dashed him.

He stepped into the middle of the yard, and glancing up beheld
Margaret and Mr. Slocum standing on the veranda. Even at that
distance he could perceive the pallor on one face, and the
consternation written all over the other.

Hanging his head with sadness, Richard crossed the yard, which
gave out mournful echoes to his footfalls, and swung to the large
gate, nearly catching old Giles by the heel as he did so. Looking
through the slats, he saw Lumley and Peterson hobbling arm in arm
down the street,--after more than twenty-five years of kindly
treatment.

"Move number one," said Richard, lifting the heavy cross-piece
into its place and fastening it with a wooden pin. "Now I must go and
prop up Mr. Slocum."

XVI

There is no solitude which comes so near being tangible as that of
a vast empty workshop, crowded a moment since. The busy, intense life
that has gone from it mysteriously leaves behind enough of itself to
make the stillness poignant. One might imagine the invisible ghost of
doomed Toil wandering from bench to bench, and noiselessly fingering
the dropped tools, still warm from the workman's palm. Perhaps this
impalpable presen