“The clearest-headed have no doubt; they know as well as you and I do the flimsiness of those resolutions.  But the thick heads are in a fog.  Every man naturally likes his pay increased; if a simple fellow is told five or six hundred times that his wages ought to be raised, the idea is so agreeable and insidious that by and by he begins to believe himself grossly underpaid, though he may be getting twice what he is worth.  He doesn’t reason about it; that’s the last thing he’ll do for you.  In this mood he lets himself be flown away by the breath of some loud-mouthed demagogue, who has no interest in the matter beyond hearing his own talk and passing round the hat after the meeting is over.  That is what has happened to our folks below.  But they are behaving handsomely.”

“Yes, and I don’t like it.”

Since seven o’clock the most unimpeachable decorum had reigned in the workshops.  It was now nine, and this brief dialogue had occurred between Mr. Slocum and Richard on the veranda, just as the latter was on the point of descending into the yard to have his talk with the men.

The workshops—­or rather the shed in which the workshops were, for it was one low structure eighteen or twenty feet wide and open on the west side—­ran the length of the yard, and with the short extension at the southerly end formed the letter L. There were no partitions, an imaginary line separating the different gangs of workers.  A person standing at the head of the building could make himself heard more or less distinctly in the remotest part.

The grating lisp of the wet saws eating their way into the marble bowlder, and the irregular quick taps of the seventy or eighty mallets were not suspended as Richard took his stand beside a tall funereal urn at the head of the principal workshop.  After a second’s faltering he rapped smartly on the lip of the ukrn with the key of his studio-door.

Instantly every arm appeared paralyzed, and the men stood motionless, with the tools in their hands.

Richard began in a clear but not loud voice, though it seemed to ring on the sudden silence:—­

“Mr. Slocum has asked me to say a few words to you, this morning, about those resolutions, and one or two other matters that have occurred to him in this connection.  I am no speech-maker; I never learned that trade”—­

“Never learned any trade,” muttered Durgin, inaudibly.

—­“but I think I can manage some plain, honest talk, for straight-forward men.”

Richard’s exordium was listened to with painful attention.

“In the first place,” he continued, “I want to remind you, especially the newer men, that Slocum’s Yard has always given steady work and prompt pay to Stillwater hands.  No hand has ever been turned off without sufficient cause, or kept on through mere favoritism.  Favors have been shown, but they have been shown to all alike.  If anything has gone crooked, it has been straightened out as soon as Mr. Slocum knew of it.  That has been the course of the yard in the past, and the Proprietor doesn’t want you to run away with the idea that that course is going to be changed.  One change, for the time being, is going to be made at our own suggestion.  From now, until the 1st of September, this yard will close gates on Saturdays at five P.M. instead of six P.M.”