At one time he was for having the assistance of the military, but as he cooled down he was obliged to acknowledge that his request would be ridiculed. Then he determined on getting summonses against about twenty of the ringleaders, whom he meant to discharge. Once he called Banks, and asked him what it would be best to do. "Put the wage right again," said the foreman. Whereupon Richard Glaire turned upon him in a burst of childish passion, and declared that he was in league with the scoundrels who had assaulted him. "There, I shall go till you've had time to cool down," said Banks, grimly. "Your metal's hot, Master Richard, and it wean't be raight again till you've had a night's rest." Richard made no reply, but sat biting his lips and making plans till dusk, when he cautiously stole out of the building by a side door, of which he alone had the key. Banks stayed on for another couple of hours, plodding about the building, examining doors, the extinct forges and furnaces, looking at the bands of the huge lathes, and displaying a curious kind of energy, as by means of a small bull's-eye lantern he peered in and out of all sorts of out-of-the-way places. "There's no knowing what games Master Sim might try on," he remarked to himself; "blowings up and cutting bands, and putting powther in the furnace holes; he's shack enew for ought, and I dessay some on 'em will be stupid enough to side wi' him. What's that?" He stopped and listened, for it seemed to him that he had heard a noise below him in the ground floor. The sound was not repeated, so he went on cautiously through the great black workshop, with its weird assemblage of shafts, cranks, and bands, looking, in the fitful gleams cast by the lantern, like a torture-chamber in the fabled Pandemonium. A stranger would have tripped and fallen a dozen times over the metal-cumbered floor; but every inch and every piece of machinery was so familiar to the foreman that he could have gone about the place blindfold, even as he did once or twice in the dark when he closed his bull's-eye lantern, thinking he heard a noise. All seemed right in this workshop, so he descended to the foundry, going over it and amongst the furnaces, now growing cold. Then he threaded his way amongst the sunken moulds for castings; looked up at the cranes, paused before the massive crucibles used for melting bell-metal or ingots for the great steel bells, and ended by stopping again to listen. "I'll sweer I heerd a noise," he muttered, taking a short constable's staff from his pocket, and twisting its stout leather thong round his wrist. "It will be strange and awkward for somebody if I find him playing any of his tricks here." He went cautiously on tip-toe in the direction from which the noise had seemed to come, going up a short ladder to a raised portion of the foundry, which formed an open floor where lighter work was done.