What was that in the shaking hands beneath the cap? Christopher's eyes, still on the tragically foul face, never dropped to catch the metallic gleam; his whole mind lay in dragging out the truth entangled in the wild words. The voice quivered more and more as if under spur of some mental effort that urged the speaker to a climax he could not reach but on the current of the crazy syllables. "So it ain't no concern of yours if we lives or dies, if we work or be turned off without so much as a word to carry us on again? 'Tain't nothing to you we've got fifty masters instead of one, so long as you gets your money. I tell you I won't serve fifty of 'em. One as we could reckon on was bad enough, but fifty of 'em to battle flesh and blood and make their own food out of us, and no one what we can call to account as it were, I tell 'ee we won't have it. I won't serve 'em." The poor wretch had forgotten he was already dismissed from such service. "If you won't be their master, then by God, you shan't be master anywhere else." His hand with the revolver he had clutched under cover of his cap flew up. The report was followed by a splitting of glass and a cry without. For a brief second that was like a day of eternity, Christopher and the man continued to face each other; the swaying blue-grey barrel of the smoking weapon acted like a magnetic point on which their numbed minds met and mingled in confusion, with that independence of time we ascribe to dreams. For the echo of the report had not died from the room when those outside rushed in. The would-be assassin instantly crumpled up on the floor, a mere heap of grimy clothes, unconscious even of his failure. The men clamoured round Christopher with white faces and persistent inquiries as to whether he were hurt. He reassured them of that as soon as it appeared to him his voice could sound across the deafening echo of the shot. "Not hurt in the least," he said dully, looking down at the huddled form. "Is he dead?" They straightened out the poor creature they would gladly have lynched, and one of them shook his head. "A fit, I think. Let him be." A new-comer rushed in with horror-stricken face, and stopped his tongue at sight of Christopher. "How's it outside?" whispered one to him. "Dead." The word was hardly breathed, but Christopher spun round on his heel. "Who's dead?" They looked at him uneasily, and at one another. He moved to the door mechanically, when an old man, a north-countryman and a Methodist preacher of some note, laid his hand on his arm. "Don't 'ee take on, lad. 'Tis the Lord's will which life He'll take home to him. Maybe He's got bigger work for you than for the little 'un." "Who is it?" His dry lips hardly framed the words. "It's Ann Barty's little chap as was passing. We thought 'twere but the glass." "Better a boy than a man," muttered another.