Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was to take down that Hydra’s two hundred crests of insubordination.

They inspected him, and he them as coolly.  He read and ticketed each man, as he came up,—­good, bad, or on the fence,—­and marked each so that he would know him among a myriad.

The Hands faced the Head.  It was a question whether the two hundred or the one would be master in Dunderbunk.

Which was boss?  An old question.

It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power, and there is always a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.

Wade had made up his mind on this subject.  He waited a moment until the men were still.  He was a Saxon six-footer of thirty.  He stood easily on his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before.  His mouth looked firm, his brow freighted, his nose clipper,—­that the hands could see.  But clipper noses are not always backed by a stout hull.  Seemingly freighted brows sometimes carry nothing but ballast and dunnage.  The firmness may be all in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, a mere silly slit.  All which the hands knew.

Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer, when it has a bar to shape.

“I’m the new Superintendent.  Richard Wade is my name.  I rang the bell because I wanted to see you and have you see me.  You know as well as I do that these Works are in a bad way.  They can’t stay so.  They must come up and pay you regular wages and the Company profits.  Every man of you has got to be here on the spot when the bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work.  You haven’t been,—­and you know it.  You’ve turned out rotten iron,—­stuff that any honest shop would be ashamed of.  Now there’s to be a new leaf turned over here.  You’re to be paid on the nail; but you’ve got to earn your money.  I won’t have any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me.  I shall work hard myself, and every man of you will, or he leaves the shop.  Now, if anybody has a complaint to make, I’ll hear him before you all.”

The men were evidently impressed with Wade’s Inaugural.  It meant something.  But they were not to be put down so easily, after long misrule.  There began to be a whisper,—­

“B’il in, Bill Tarbox! and talk up to him!”

Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the new ruler.

Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he had been the butt-end of riot and revolt at the Foundry.  He had had his own way with Whiffler.  He did not like to abdicate and give in to this new chap without testing him.

In a better mood, Bill would have liked Wade’s looks and words; but today he had a sore head, a sour face, and a bitter heart from last night’s spree.  And then he had heard—­it was as well known already in Dunderbunk as if the town-crier had cried it—­that Wade was lodging at Mrs. Purtett’s, where poor Bill was excluded.  So Bill stepped forward as spokesman of the ruffianly element, and the immoral force gathered behind and backed him heavily.