“Is not some kind of compromise possible?” suggested Mr. Slocum, looking over the slip again.  “Now this fourth clause, about closing the yard an hour early on Saturdays, I don’t strongly object to that, though with eighty hands it means, every week, eighty hours’ work which the yard pays for and doesn’t get.”

“I should advise granting that request.  Such concessions are never wasted.  But, Mr. Slocum, this is not going to satisfy them.  They have thrown in one reasonable demand merely to flavor the rest.  I happen to know that they are determined to stand by their programme to the last letter.”

“You know that?”

“I have a friend at court.  Of course this is not to be breathed, but Denyven, without being at all false to his comrades, talks freely with me.  He says they are resolved not to give an inch.”

“Then we will close the works.”

“That is what I wanted you to say, sir!” cried Richard.

“With this new scale of prices and plenty of work, we might probably come out a little ahead the next six months; but it wouldn’t pay for the trouble and the capital invested.  Then when trade slackened, we should be running at a loss, and there’d be another wrangle over a reduction.  We had better lie idle.”

“Stick to that, sir, and may be it will not be necessary.”

“But if they strike”—­

“They won’t all strike.  At least,” added Richard, “I hope not.  I have indirectly sounded several of the older hands, and they have half promised to hold on; only half promised, for every man of them at heart fears the trades-union more than No-bread—­until No-bread comes.”

“Whom have you spoken with?”

“Lumley, Giles, Peterson, and some others,—­your pensioners, I call them.”

“Yes, they were in the yard in my father’s time; they have not been worth their salt these ten years.  When the business was turned over to me I didn’t discharge any old hand who had given his best days to the yard.  Somehow I couldn’t throw away the squeezed lemons.  An employer owes a good workman something beyond the wages paid.”

“And a workman owes a good employer something beyond the work done.  You stood by these men after they outlived their usefulness, and if they do not stand by you now, they’re a shabby set.”

“I fancy they will, Richard.”

“I think they had better, and I wish they would.  We have enough odds and ends to keep them busy awhile, and I shouldn’t like to have the clinking of chisels die out altogether under the old sheds.”

“Nor I,” returned Mr. Slocum, with a touch of sadness in his intonation.  “It has grown to be a kind of music to me,” and he paused to listen to the sounds of ringing steel that floated up from the workshop.

“Whatever happens, that music shall not cease in the yard except on Sundays, if I have to take the mallet and go at a slab all alone.”

“Slocum’s Yard with a single workman in it would be a pleasing spectacle,” said Mr. Slocum, smiling ruefully.