Then, again, he could not in working dress ask to call; it would seem so incongruous to stand before her to make such a request covered with perspiration and dust. It was hard to be dignified under such circumstances; he must be washed and dressed properly. In the meantime, the men had discovered how matters stood, and some of them made very free with the whole situation. Two of them especially hated him. These two men had drifted to the farm from the mines somewhere, and were rough, hard characters. They would have come to blows with him, only they knew something of the power lying coiled in his long arms. One day he overheard one of the men speaking of Edith, and his tone stopped the blood in Arthur's heart. When he walked among the group of men his face was white and set. "You take that back!" he said in a low voice. "You take that back, or I'll kill you right where you stand!" "Do him up, Tim!" shouted the other ruffian; but Tim hesitated. "I'll do him, then," said the other man. "I owe him one myself." He caught up a strip of board which was lying on the ground near, but one of the Norwegian workmen put his foot on it, and before he could command his weapon, Arthur brought a pail which he held in his right hand down upon his opponent's head. The man fell as if dead, and the pail shattered into its original staves. Arthur turned then to face Tim, his hands doubled into mauls; but the other men interfered, and the encounter was over. Arthur waited to see if the fallen man could rise, and then turned away reeling and breathless. For an hour afterward his hands shook so badly that he could not go on with his work. At first he determined to go to Richards, the foreman, and demand the discharge of the two tramps, but as he thought of the explanation necessary, he gave it up as impossible. He almost wept with shame and despair at the thought of her name having been mixed in the tumult. He had meant to kill when he struck, and the nervous prostration which followed showed him how far he had gone. He had not had a fight since he was thirteen years of age, and now everything seemed lost in the light of his murderous rage. It would all come out sooner or later, and she would despise him. He went to see the man just before going to supper, and found him in his barracks, sitting near a pail of cold water from which he was splashing his head at intervals. He looked up as Arthur entered, but went on with his ministrations; after a pause he said: "That was a terrible lick you give me, young feller--brought the blood out of my ears." "I meant to kill you," was Arthur's grim reply. "I know you did. If that darned Norse hadn't put his foot on that board _you'd_ be doing this." He lifted a handful of water to his swollen and aching head. "What did you go to that board for? Why didn't you stand up like a man?" "Because you were swinging that bucket." "Oh, bosh! You were a coward as well as a blackguard."