er, he would have jumped at
it. What do you and Slocum take me for? You're a pair of rascals!"

Richard staggered back, bewildered and blinded, as if he had
received a blow in the eyes.

"No," continued Mr. Shackford, with a gesture of intense contempt,
"you are less than rascals. You are fools. A rascal has to have
brains!"

"You shameless old man!" cried Richard, as soon as he could get
his voice.

To do Mr. Shackford justice, he was thoroughly convinced that
Richard had lent himself to a preposterous attempt to obtain money
from him. The absence of ordinary shrewdness in the method stamped it
at once as belonging to Slocum, of whose mental calibre Mr. Shackford
entertained no flattering estimate.

"Slocum!" he muttered, grinding the word between his teeth.
"Family ties!" he cried, hurling the words scornfully over the
banister as he disappeared into one of the upper chambers.

Richard stood with one hand on the newel-post, white at the lip
with rage. For a second he had a wild impulse to spring up the
staircase, but, controlling this, he turned and hurried out of the
house.

At the gate he brushed roughly against a girl, who halted and
stared. It was a strange thing to see Mr. Richard Shackford, who
always had a pleasant word for a body, go by in that blind, excited
fashion, striking one fist into the palm of the other hand, and
talking to his own self! Mary Hennessey watched him until he wheeled
out of Welch's Court, and then picking up her basket, which she had
rested on the fence, went her way.

XII

At the main entrance to the marble works Richard nearly walked
over a man who was coming out, intently mopping his forehead with a
very dirty calico handkerchief. It was an English stone-dresser named
Denyven. Richard did not recognize him at first.

"That you, Denyven!... what has happened!"

"I've 'ad a bit of a scrimmage, sir."

"A scrimmage in the yard, in work hours!"

The man nodded.

"With whom?"

"Torrini, sir,--he's awful bad this day."

"Torrini,--it is always Torrini! It seems odd that one man should
be everlastingly at the bottom of everything wrong. How did it
happen? Give it to me straight, Denyven; I don't want a crooked
story. This thing has got to stop in Slocum's Yard."

"The way of it was this, sir: Torrini wasn't at the shop this
morning. He 'ad a day off."

"I know."

"But about one o'clock, sir, he come in the yard. He 'ad been at
the public 'ouse, sir, and he