Every man in the room was on his feet and drinking, save Lamar; and every man drank his cup to the bottom in honor of the clergyman who was not afraid.
It was a strange tribute; equivocal, incongruous, unseemly no doubt, but genuine indeed. Lamar stood, for a moment, sullen and defiant; but before the glasses were lowered he turned to the bartender and said:
“When Bricky comes in tell him I want to see him.”
Then he strode on into an adjoining private room, and closed the door behind him. But he took back nothing that he had said.
Ten minutes later Bricky came and joined Lamar in the private room. He was a tall, angular fellow, with a shock of dull red hair, and a pair of gray eyes that looked out shrewdly from under overhanging brows. He was a skilled laborer in the plant of the Malleson Manufacturing Company, and a leader of the workingmen employed there.
“You’ll have a beer, won’t you?” he asked, touching a button in the wall behind him.
“I wasn’t drinking,” replied Lamar, “but I will have a whiskey, and I’ll have it straight. Beer won’t touch the spot to-night. I’ve got an attack of nerves. The treat’s mine.”
“Thanks! I heard the boys outside rubbed it into you a little.”
“Rubbed nothing in. They can’t faze me by shouting for the preacher. And as for Joe Poulsky, damn him! I’ll get him yet.”
When the whiskey came he drank it at a gulp. Then he asked how the men were getting on at the Malleson plant. Bricky (his name was Thomas Hoover, but few knew him otherwise than as Bricky) replied that things were going on as usual. The wage scale was satisfactory; sanitary conditions good, hours of labor agreeable, bosses human; probably the best plant in the city in which to work.