s he?"

"Some day or other," answered Durgin. "First he'll step into the
business, and then into the family. He's had his eye on Slocum's girl
these four or five years. Got a cast of her fist up in his workshop.
Leave Dick Shackford alone for lining his nest and making it soft all
round."

"Why shouldn't he?" asked Stevens. "He deserves a good girl, and
there's none better. If sickness or any sort of trouble comes to a
poor man's door, she's never far off with her kind words and them
things the rich have when they are laid up."

"Oh, the girl is well enough."

"You couldn't say less. Before your mother died,"--Mrs. Durgin had
died the previous autumn,--"I see that angil going to your house many
a day with a little basket of comforts tucked under her wing. But
she's too good to be praised in such a place as this," added Stevens.
After a pause he inquired, "What makes you down on Shackford? He has
always been a friend to you."

"One of those friends who walk over your head," replied Durgin. "I
was in the yard two years before him, and see where he is."

"Lord love you," said Stevens, leaning back in his chair and
contemplating Durgin thoughtfully, "there is marble and marble; some
is Carrara marble, and some isn't. The fine grain takes a polish you
can't get on to the other."

"Of course, he is statuary marble, and I'm full of seams and
feldspar."

"You are like the most of us,--not the kind that can be worked up
into anything very ornamental."

"Thank you for nothing," said Durgin, turning away. "I came from
as good a quarry as ever Dick Shackford. Where's Torrini to-night?"

"Nobody has seen him since the difficulty," said Dexter, "except
Peters. Torrini sent for him after supper."

As Dexter spoke, the door opened and Peters entered. He went
directly to the group composed chiefly of Slocum's men, and without
making any remark began to distribute among them certain small blue
tickets, which they pocketed in silence. Glancing carelessly at his
piece of card-board, Durgin said to Peters,--

"Then it's decided?"

Peters nodded.

"How's Torrini?"

"He's all right."

"What does he say?"

"Nothing in perticular," responded Peters, "and nothing at all
about his little skylark with Shackford."

"He's a cool one!" exclaimed Durgin.

Though the slips of blue pasteboard had been delivered and
accepted without comment, it was known in a second through the
bar-room that a special meeting had been convened