“We thought you might not insist there, sir.”

“I insist on conducting my own business in my own way.”

The voice was the voice of Slocum, but the backbone was Richard’s.

“Then, sir, the Association don’t object to a reasonable number of apprentices.”

“How many is that?”

“As many as you want, I expect, sir,” said Stevens, shuffling his feet.

“Very well, Stevens.  Go round to the front gate and Mr. Shackford will let you in.”

There were two doors to the office, one leading into the yard, and the other, by which the deputation had entered and was now making its exit, opened upon the street.

Richard heaved a vast sigh of relief as he took down the beam securing the principal entrance.

“Good-morning, boys,” he chirped, with a smile as bright as newly minted gold.  “I hope you enjoyed yourselves.”

The quartet ducked their heads bashfully, and Stevens replied, “Can’t speak for the others, Mr. Shackford, but I never enjoyed myself worse.”

Piggott lingered a moment behind the rest, and looking back over his shoulder said, “That peach garden was what fetched us!”

Richard gave a loud laugh, for the peach garden had been a horticultural invention of his own.

In the course of the forenoon the majority of the hands presented themselves at the office, dropping into the yard in gangs of five or six, and nearly all were taken on.  To dispose definitely of Lumley, Giles, and Peterson, they were not taken on at Slocum’s Yard, though they continued to be, directly or indirectly, Slocum’s pensioners, even after they were retired to the town farm.

Once more the chisels sounded merrily under the long shed.  That same morning the spinners went back to the mules, but the molders held out until nightfall, when it was signified to them that they demands would be complied with.

The next day the steam-whistles of the Miantowona Iron Works and Dana’s Mills sent the echoes flying beyond that undulating line of pines and hemlocks which half encircles Stillwater, and falls away loosely on either side, like an unclasped girdle.

A calm, as if from out the cloudless blue sky that arched it day after day, seemed to drift down upon the village.  Han-Lin, with no more facial expression than an orange, suddenly reappeared on the streets, and went about repairing his laundry, unmolested.  The children were playing in the sunny lanes again, unafraid, and mothers sat on doorsteps in the summer twilights, singing softly to the baby in arm.  There was meat on the table, and the tea-kettle hummed comfortably at the back of the stove.  The very winds that rustled through the fragrant pines, and wandered fitfully across the vivid green of the salt marshes, breathed peace and repose.

Then, one morning, this blissful tranquility was rudely shattered.  Old Mr. Lemuel Shackford had been found murdered in his own house in Welch’s Court.