Torrini was seated on a block of granite in front of the upper sheds, flourishing a small chisel in one hand and addressing the men, a number of whom had stopped work to listen to him.  At sight of Richard they made a show of handling their tools, but it was so clear something grave was going to happen that the pretense fell through.  They remained motionless, resting on their mallets, with their eyes turned towards Richard.  Torrini followed the general glance, and pause din his harangue.

“Talk of the devil!” he muttered, and then, apparently continuing the thread of his discourse, broke into a strain of noisy declamation.

Richard walked up to him quietly.

“Torrini,” he said, “you can’t be allowed to speak here, you know.”

“I can speak where I like,” replied Torrini gravely.  He was drunk, but the intoxication was not in his tongue.  His head, as Denyven had asserted, was as clear as a fog-horn.

“When you are sober, you can come to the desk and get your pay and your kit.  You are discharged from the yard.”

Richard was standing within two paces of the man, who looked up with an uncertain smile, as if he had not quite taken in the sense of the words.  Then, suddenly straightening himself, he exclaimed,—­

“Slocum don’t dare do it!”

“But I do.”

“You!”

“When I do a thing Mr. Slocum backs me.”

“But who backs Slocum,—­the Association, may be?”

“Certainly the Association ought to.  I want you to leave the yard now.”

“He backs Slocum,” said Torrini, settling himself on the block again, “and Slocum backs down,” at which there was a laugh among the men.

Richard made a step forward.

“Hands off!” cried a voice from under the sheds.

“Who said that?” demanded Richard, wheeling around.  No one answered, but Richard had recognized Durgin’s voice.  “Torrini, if you don’t quit the yard in two minutes by the clock yonder, I shall put you out by the neck.  Do you understand?”

Torrini glared about him confusedly for a moment, and broke into voluble Italian; then, without a warning gesture, sprung to his feet and struck at Richard.  A straight red line, running vertically the length of his cheek, showed where the chisel had grazed him.  The shops were instantly in a tumult, the men dropping their tools and stumbling over the blocks, with cries of “Keep them apart!” “Shame on you!” “Look out, Mr. Shackford!”

“Is it mad ye are, Torrany!” cried Michael Hennessey, hurrying from the saw-bench.  Durgin held him back by the shoulders.

“Let them alone,” said Durgin.

The flat steel flashed again in the sunlight, but fell harmlessly, and before the blow could be repeated, Richard had knitted his fingers in Torrini’s neckerchief and twisted it so tightly that the man gasped.  Holding him by this, Richard dragged Torrini across the yard, and let him drop on the sidewalk outside the gate, where he lay in a heap, inert.