smashed the window and the cook stove, and the place was filled with smoke and ashes when the neighbors dragged them away from each other. I’d done nothing to deserve all that disgrace. You know, sir, the way the women will talk — ’

“And Dick hushed her up there, and took all of five minutes more in getting rid of her. Her great fear was that her husband would lose his place. From what Dick told her, I waited. He had made no decision, and I knew the foreman was next on the carpet. In he came. I’d have given the world to see him. But I could only listen.

“Dick jumped right into the thick of it. He described the scene and uproar, and Smith acknowledged that it had been riotous for a while. ‘She says she gave you no encouragement,’ Dick said next.