Perhaps unconsciously he quickened his pace.

“Not so fast, Joe!” gasped Langham.

“Oh, all right, boss!” responded Montgomery.

Langham turned to him quickly, but as he did so his foot struck the cinder ballast of the road-bed.

“Good night, boss!” said Joe, his eyes fixed on the distant light.

“Wait!” said Langham imperiously.

“What for?” demanded Montgomery.

“The water made such a noise I couldn’t talk to you out on the bridge,” began Langham.

“Well, I can’t stop now, boss,” said the handy-man, turning impatiently from him.

“Yes, damn you—­you can—­and will!” and Langham raised his voice to give weight to his words.

Montgomery rounded up his shoulders.

“Don’t you try that, boss!  Andy Gilmore could shout me down and cuss me out, but you can’t; and I’ll peel the face off you if you lay hands on me!” He thrust out a grimy fist and menaced Langham with it.  There was a brief silence and the handy-man swung about on his heel.

“Good night, boss!” he said over his shoulder, as he moved off.

Langham made no answer, but long after Joe’s shuffling steps had died away in the distance he was still standing there irresolute and undecided, staring fixedly off into the darkness that had swallowed up the handy-man’s hulking figure.

Mr. Montgomery, muttering somewhat and wagging his head, continued along the track for a matter of a hundred yards, when his feet found a narrow path which led off in the direction of the light he had so confidently declared was his old woman’s.  Then presently as he shuffled forward, the other seven houses of the row of which his was the eighth, cloaked in utter darkness, took shadowy form against the sky.  The handy-man stumbled into his unkempt front yard, its metes and bounds but indifferently defined by the remnants of what had been a picket fence; he made his way to the side door, which he threw open without ceremony.  As he had surmised, his old woman was up.  She was seated by the table in the corner, engaged in mending the ragged trousers belonging to Joseph Montgomery, junior.

At sight of Joe, senior, she screamed and flung them aside; then white and shaking she came weakly to her feet.  The handy-man grinned genially.  He was not of demonstrative temperament.

“Joe!” cried Nellie, as she sprang toward him.  “Dear Joe!” and she threw her arms about him.

“Oh, hell!” said the handy-man.

Nellie was hanging limply about his neck and he was aware that she had kissed him; he could not remember when before she had taken such a liberty.  Mr. Montgomery believed in a reasonable display of affection, but kissing seemed to him a singularly frivolous practice.

“Oh, my man!” sobbed Nellie.

“Oh, cheese it, and let me loose—­I don’t like this to-do!  Can’t a married man come home without all this fuss?”