Richard know not what to answer. If his father had to be told, why, better that he himself should break it to him. There was still a chance that it might be kept from him.
"Something or other gone wrong, I suppose, sir. Never mind. How well those new borders look!"
"Don't they, Dick! I'm glad I decided upon them."
And Richard went on to his works.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
LYING IN WAIT
Night had fallen: not a bright or pleasant night.
A few skulkers had gathered behind the dwarf hedge, that skirted the piece of waste land near the North Works. An ill-looking set of men, as seen at present: for they had knelt so as to bring themselves almost on a level with the top of the hedge. Poole was in the middle; his face savage, a pistol in his right hand.
Of all the men who had returned to work, the most obnoxious to the old hands was one named Ralley. It was not so much because he had been a turn-coat--that is, after holding out to the eleventh moment, had finally gone back at the twelfth--that the men hated him, as because they believed him to be treacherous. Ralley had been red-hot for the strike; had done more by his agitation than any one man to bring it about. He had resolutely refused all the overtures made by Richard North: and yet--he had gone back when the works were finally reopened. For this the men heartily despised him--far more than they did those who had been ready to go back from the first. In addition to this, they had been suspecting--and lately had felt sure--that he was a snake in the grass. That he had laid himself out to pick up, fairly or stealthily, as might be, bits of information about them, their doings and sayings, their wretched condition and threats of revenge, and had carried them to the works and to Richard North. And so--the contents of the pistol that Poole held in his hand were meant for Ralley.
For a long time the malcontents of North Inlet had been burning to take vengeance on some one: some new treachery on Ralley's part, or suspected treachery, had come to light, and they determined to shoot him. Poor, misguided, foolish men! As if it would improve things for them! Suppose they killed Ralley, how would it better their condition? Ralley had not suffered half what they suffered. He was unmarried; and, during the strike, he had been helped by his relatives, who were pretty well off, so that he had known neither starvation nor tattered clothing, as they had: and this made his returning to work all the worse in their eyes. Ralley was about the age of Richard North, and not unlike him in height and figure: so much like him, indeed, that since their evil act had been determined on, one of the others had bade Poole take care he did not mistake the master for him in the dark. Poole's sullen rejoinder was, that it would not much matter if he did.