'"That's how 'nigger' Pilling said. He guessed the cut was down by fifty. What is it? A buck? Wages?"
Porson's hand was fingering one of the guns in his pocket. His eyes were snapping.
"Curse 'em," he cried at last. "I just don't get it. They're goin' slow."
He pushed his empty glass at the suttler who promptly re-filled it.
"Young Pete Cust," Abe went on confidentially, "handed me a good guess only this mornin'. He'd had his sixth Rye before startin' out to work. Maybe he was rattled and didn't figger the things he said. He was astin' fer word up from the mills. I didn't worry to think, and just said I hadn't got. I ast 'why'? The boy took a quick look round, kind o' scared. He said, 'jest nothin'.' He reckoned he'd a dame somewhere around Sachigo. She'd wrote him things wer' kind of bad with the mills. They were beat fer dollars, and looked like a crash. He'd heard the same right there, an' it had him rattled. He thought of quittin' and goin' over to the Skandinavia. Maybe it's the sort o' talk that's got 'em all rattled. Maybe they're goin' slow on the cut, worryin' for their pay-roll. You can't tell. They don't say a thing. Seems to me we want Sternford right here to queer these yarns. Father Adam's around an' talked some. But—"
Porson drank down his liquor, and his glass hit the counter with angry force.
"They're mush-faced hoodlams anyway," he cried fiercely. "Ther' ain't a thing wrong with the mills. I'd bet a million on it."
He stood up from the counter and thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. He was a powerful figure with legs like the tree trunks it was his work to see cut. Quite abruptly he moved away, and Abe's questioning eyes followed him.
He strode down amongst the scattered tables and came to a halt before the tweed-coated stranger. All the men looked up, and their talk died out.
"Say, what's your bizness around here?"