Several voices cried, “Good for Slocum!” “Where’s Slocum?” “Why don’t Slocum speak for himself?” cried one voice.

“It is Mr. Slocum’s habit,” answered Richard, “to give his directions to me, I give them to the foremen, and the foremen to the shops.  Mr. Slocum follows that custom on this occasion.  With regard to the new scale of wages which the Association has submitted to him, the Proprietor refuses to accept it, or any modification of it.”

A low murmur ran through the workshops.

“What’s a modificashun, sir?” asked Jemmy Willson, stepping forward, and scratching his left ear diffidently.

“A modification,” replied Richard, considerably embarrassed to give an instant definition, “is a—­a”—­

“A splitting of the difference, by—!” shouted somebody in the third shop.

“Thank you,” said Richard, glancing in the direction of his impromptu Webster’s Unabridged.  “Mr. Slocum does not propose to split the difference.  The wages in every department are to be just what they are,—­neither more nor less.  If anybody wishes to make a remark,” he added, observing a restlessness in several of the men, “I beg he will hold on until I get through.  I shall not detain you much longer, as the parson says before he has reached the middle of his sermon.

“What I say now, I was charged to make particularly clear to you.  It is this:  In future Mr. Slocum intends to run Slocum’s Yard himself.  Neither you, nor I, nor the Association will be allowed to run it for him. [Sensation.] Until now the Association has tied him down to two apprentices a year.  From this hour, out, Mr. Slocum will take on, not two, or twenty, but two hundred apprentices if the business warrants it.”

The words were not clearly off Richard’s lips when the foreman of the shop in which he was speaking picked up a couple of small drills, and knocked them together with a sharp click.  In an instant the men laid aside their aprons, bundled up their tools, and marched out of the shed two by two, in dead silence.  That same click was repeated almost simultaneously in the second shop, and the same evolution took place.  Then click, click, click! went the drills, sounding fainter and fainter in the distant departments; and in less than three minutes there was not a soul left in Slocum’s Yard except the Orator of the Day.

Richard had anticipated some demonstration, either noisy or violent, perhaps both; but this solemn, orderly desertion dashed him.

He stepped into the middle of the yard, and glancing up beheld Margaret and Mr. Slocum standing on the veranda.  Even at that distance he could perceive the pallor on one face, and the consternation written all over the other.

Hanging his head with sadness, Richard crossed the yard, which gave out mournful echoes to his footfalls, and swung to the large gate, nearly catching old Giles by the heel as he did so.  Looking through the slats, he saw Lumley and Peterson hobbling arm in arm down the street,—­after more than twenty-five years of kindly treatment.