The sad company speedily dispersed, and left nothing to offend nor disgust the Life and Fire Insurance, except a new grave, and a debt of nine hundred pounds to the heirs or assigns of Richard Martin.

Not very far from this church-yard was a public-house; and in that public-house a small parlor upstairs, and in that parlor a man, who watched the funeral rites with great interest; but not in a becoming spirit; for his eyes twinkled with the intensest merriment all the time, and at each fresh stage of the mournful business he burst into peals of laughter.  Never was any man so thoroughly amused in the City before, at all events in business hours.

Richard Martin’s executor waited a decent time, and then presented his claim to the Gosshawk.  His brother proved a lien on it for L300 and the rest went by will to his wife.  The Gosshawk paid the money after the delay accorded by law.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Messrs. Bolt and Little put their heads together, and played a prudent game.  They kept the works going for a month, without doing anything novel, except what tended to the health and comfort of their workmen.

But, meantime, they cleared out two adjacent rooms:  one was called the studio, the other the experiment-room.

In due course they hired a couple of single men from Birmingham to work the machine under lock and key.

Little with his own hands, affected an aperture in the party-wall, and thus conveyed long saws from his studio to the machine, and received them back ground.

Then men were lodged three miles off, were always kept at work half an hour later than the others, and received six pounds per week apiece, on pain of instant dismissal should they breathe a syllable.  They did the work of twenty-four men; so even at that high rate of wages, the profit was surprising.  It actually went beyond the inventor’s calculation, and he saw himself at last on the road to rapid fortune, and, above all, to Grace Carden.

This success excited Bolt’s cupidity, and he refused to contract the operation any longer.

Then the partners had a quarrel, and nearly dissolved.  However, it ended in Little dismissing his Birmingham hands and locking up his “experiment-room,” and in Bolt openly devoting another room to the machines:  two long, two circular.

These machines coined money, and Bolt chuckled and laughed at his partner’s apprehensions for the space of twenty-one days.

On the twenty-second day, the Saw-grinders’ Union, which had been stupefied at first, but had now realized the situation, sent Messrs. Bolt and Little a letter, civil and even humble; it spoke of the new invention as one that, if adopted, would destroy their handicraft, and starve the craftsmen and their families, and expressed an earnest hope that a firm which had shown so much regard for the health and comfort of the workmen would not persist in a fatal course, on which they had entered innocently and for want of practical advice.