forward and joined in this
excited circle. Considerable effort was made on the part of the latter
to learn just what the trouble was, after which the big foreman
interposed with:

"What's the trouble here? Come, now! What's all this row, Rourke? Ye
wouldn't fight here, would ye? Have him arristed, er go to his home--ye
say ye know him--but don't be fightin' here. Supposin' waan av the
bosses should be comin' along now?" and at the same time he interposed
his great bulk between the two.

Rourke, quieted some by this interruption but still sputtering with rage
and disgrace, shouted, "Lookit me coat! Lookit what he done to me coat!
See what he done to me coat! Man alive, d'ye think I'm goin' to stand
fer the likes av that? It's naht me that can be waalked on by a loafer
like that--an' me payin' him more than ever he was worth, an' him
waalkin' aaf an' l'avin' the job half done. I'll fix him this time. I'll
show him. I'll tache him to be comin' around an' disturbin' a man when
he's at his work. I'll fix him now," and once more he began to move. But
the great foreman was not so easily to be disposed of.

"Well then, let's caall the police," he argued in a highly conciliatory
mood. "Ye can't be fightin' him here. Sure, ye don't waant to do that.
What'll the chafe think? What is it ye'll think av yerself?"

At the same time he turned to find the intruder and demand to know what
he meant by it, but the latter had already decamped. Seeing the crowd
that had and was gathering, and that he was likely to encounter more
forms of trouble than he had anticipated, he had started down the track
toward Mott Haven.

"I'll fix ye!" Rourke shouted when he saw him going. "Ye'll pay fer
this. I'll have ye arristed. Wait! Ye'll naht get aaf so aisy this
time."

But just the same the storm was over for the present, anyhow, the man
gone, and in a little while Rourke left for his home at Mount Vernon to
repair his tattered condition. I never saw a man so crestfallen, nor one
more determined to "have the laa on him" in my life. Afterwards, when I
inquired very cautiously what he had done about it--this was a week or
two later--he replied, "Shewer, what can ye do with a loafer like that?
He has no money, an' lockin' him up won't help his wife an' children
any."

Thus ended a perfect scene out of Kilkenny.

It was not so very long after I arrived that Rourke began to tell me of
a building which the company was going to erect in Mott Haven