This is an expurgated edition of what he said; his profanity kept up a running accompaniment, like soft and distant rolling thunder.

“I got this wine at the sale of the Marquis of Santa Rita.  I heard you speak of him, I don’t know how long ago, and the minute I read in the paper that he had turned up his toes, I cabled the consul at Cadiz—­you know him, a wild Irishman named Calpin—­to go to the sale of his effects and get this wine.  He cabled back, ‘What shall I pay?’ I answered, ‘Head your dispatch again:  Get means get!’ Some men have got no sense.  I did not mind the price of the wine, but it riled me to have to pay for the two cables.”

He poured out another glass and drank it drop by drop, getting, as he said, “the worth of his money every time.”

“Have some more?” he said to Farnham.

“No, thank you.”

“Then I’ll put it away.  No use of giving it to men who would prefer sixty-cent whiskey.”

Having done this, he turned again to Farnham, and said, “I told you the Old Boy was to pay.  This is how.  The labor unions have ordered a general strike; day not fixed; they are holding meetings all over town to-night.  I’ll know more about it after midnight.”

“What will it amount to?” asked Farnham.

“Keen savey?” replied Temple, in his Mississippi River Spanish.  “The first thing will be the closing of the mills, and putting anywhere from three thousand to ten thousand men on the streets.  Then, if the strike gains the railroad men, we shall be embargoed, ——­ boiling, and safety-valve riveted down.”

Farnham had no thought of his imperilled interests.  He began instantly to conjecture what possibility of danger there might be of a disturbance of public tranquillity, and to wish that the Beldings were out of town.

“How long have you known this?” he asked.

“Only certainly for a few hours.  The thing has been talked about more or less for a month, but we have had our own men in the unions and did not believe it would come to an extremity.  To-day, however, they brought ugly reports; and I ought to tell you that some of them concern you.”

Farnham lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

“We keep men to loaf with the tramps and sleep in the boozing kens.  One of them told me to-day that at the first serious disturbance a lot of bad eggs among the strikers—­not the unionists proper, but a lot of loose fish—­intend to go through some of the principal houses on Algonquin Avenue, and they mentioned yours as one of them.”

“Thank you.  I will try to be ready for them,” said Farnham.  But, cool and tried as was his courage, he could not help remembering, with something like dread, that Mrs. Belding’s house was next to his own, and that in case of riot the two might suffer together.

“There is one thing more I wanted to say,” Mr. Temple continued, with a slight embarrassment.  “If I can be of any service to you, in case of a row, I want to be allowed to help.”