"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh, tentatively, with a scared look on his thin face.
"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."
Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped him.
"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his floor-mopping.
Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his waist.
When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame at white heat, rushing through his veins.
As they sat they heard the miners tramping by the cabin door, and saw their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food. Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it, barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft, and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to "quit" was the sole topic of conversation.
Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day. Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.
"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.
"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.