But clipper noses are not always backed by a stout hull. Seemingly freighted brows sometimes carry nothing but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be all in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, a mere silly slit. All which the hands knew.

Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer, when it has a bar to shape.

Richard Wade is my

"I'm the new Superintendent. name. I rang the bell because I wanted to see you and have you see me. You know as well as I do that these Works are in a bad way. They can't stay so. They must come up and pay you regular wages and the Company profits. Every man of you has got to be here on the spot when the bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work. You have n't been,—and you know it. You've turned out rotten iron, — stuff that any honest shop would be ashamed of. Now there's to be a new leaf turned over here. You're to be paid on the nail; but you've got to earn your money. I won't have any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me. I shall work hard myself, and every man of you will, or he leaves the shop. Now, if anybody has a complaint to make, I'll hear him before you all."

The men were evidently impressed with Wade's Inaugural. It meant something. But they were not to be put down so easily, after long misrule. There began to be a whisper,

"B'il in, Bill Tarbox! and talk up to him!"

Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the new ruler.

Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he had been the but-end of riot and revolt at the Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler. He did not like to abdicate and give in to this new chap without testing him.

In a better mood, Bill would have liked Wade's looks and words; but to-day he had a sore head, a sour face, and

a bitter heart, from last night's spree. And then he had heard, it was as well known already in Dunderbunk as if the town-crier had cried it, that Wade was lodging at Mrs. Purtett's, where poor Bill was excluded. So Bill stepped forward as spokesman of the ruffianly element, and the immoral force gathered behind and backed him heavily.

Tarbox, too, was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. But he had sagged one inch for want of self-respect. He had spoilt his color and dyed his moustache. He wore foxyblack pantaloons tucked into red-topped boots, with the name of the maker on a gilt shield. His red-flannel shirt was open at the neck and caught with a black handkerchief. His damaged tile was in permanent crape for the late lamented Poole.

"We allow," says Bill, in a tone half-way between Lablache's De profundis and a burglar's bull-dog's snarl, "that we've did our work as good as need to be did. We 'xpect we know our rights. We ha'n't ben treated fair, and I'm damned if we 're go'n' to stan' it."

"Stop!" says Wade. "No swearing in this shop!" "Who the Devil is go'n' to stop it?" growled Tarbox. "I am. Do you step back now, and let some one come out who can talk like a gentleman!"

"I'm damned if I stir till I've had my say out," says Bill, shaking himself up and looking dangerous.

"Go back!"

Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous. "Don't tech me!" Bill threatened, squaring off.

He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.

Bill did not like the new Emperor's method of compelling kotou. Round One of the mill had not given him enough.

He jumped up from his soft bed and made a vicious rush

at Wade. But he was damaged by evil courses.

He was

fighting against law and order, on the side of wrong and bad manners.

The same fist met him again, and heavier.

Up went his heels! Down went his head! It struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard black pillow.

"Ring the bell to go to work!" said Wade, in a tone that made the ringer jump. "Now, men, take hold and do your duty and everything will go smooth!"

The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate champion, then at the new boss standing there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment of sledge-hammers.

They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be well governed, as all men do. They wanted disorder out and order in. The new man looked like a man, talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands give in with a good grace and go to work like honest fellows?

The line broke up. The hands went off to their duty. And there was never any more insubordination at Dunderbunk.

This was June.

Skates in the next chapter.

Love in good time afterward shall glide upon the scene.

CHAPTER IV.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT.

THE pioneer sunbeam of next Christmas morning rattled over the Dunderbunk hills, flashed into Richard Wade's eyes, waked him, and was off, ricochetting across the black ice of the river.

Wade jumped up, electrified and jubilant. He had gone to bed feeling quite too despondent for so healthy a fellow.

Christmas eve, the time of family meetings, reminded him He had not a relative in the world,

how lonely he was.

except two little nieces,

-

one as tall as his knee, the other almost up to his waist; and them he had safely bestowed in a nook of New England, to gain wit and virtues, as they gained inches.

"I have had a stern and lonely life," thought Wade, as he blew out his candle last night," and what has it profited me?"

Perhaps the pioneer sunbeam answered this question with a truism, not always as applicable as in this case, "A brave, able, self-respecting manhood is fair profit for any man's first thirty years of life."

66

But, answered or not, the question troubled Wade no more. He shot out of bed in tip-top spirits; shouted Merry Christmas!" at the rising disk of the sun; looked over the black ice; thrilled with the thought of a long holiday for skating; and proceeded to dress in a knowing suit of rough clothes, singing, "Ah, non giunge!" as he slid into them.

Presently, glancing from his south window, he observed several matinal smokes rising from the chimneys of a country-house a mile away, on a slope fronting the river.

"Peter Skerrett must be back from Europe at last,” he thought. "I hope he is as fine a fellow as he was ten years ago. I hope marriage has not made him a muff, and wealth a weakling."

Wade went down to breakfast with an heroic appetite. His "Merry Christmas" to Mrs. Purtett was followed up by a ravished kiss and the gift of a silver butter-knife. The good widow did not know which to be most charmed with. The butter-knife was genuine, shining, solid silver, with her initials, M. B. P., Martha Bilsby Purtett, given in luxuriant flourishes; but then the kiss had such a fine twang, such an exhilarating titillation! The late Perry's

kisses, from first to last, had wanted point. They were, as the Spanish proverb would put it, unsavory as unsalted eggs, for want of a moustache. The widow now perceived, with mild regret, how much she had missed when she married" a man all shaven and shorn." Her cheek, still fair, though forty, flushed with novel delight, and she appreciated her lodger more than ever.

Wade's salutation to Belle Purtett was more distant. There must be a little friendly reserve between a handsome young man and a pretty young woman several grades lower in the social scale, living in the same house. They were on the most cordial terms, however; and her gift- · of course embroidered slippers and his to her - of course "The Illustrated Poets," in Turkey morocco -were exchanged with tender good-will on both sides.

-

"We shall meet on the ice, Miss Belle," said Wade. "It is a day of a thousand for skating."

"Mr. Ringdove says you are a famous skater," Belle rejoined. "He saw you on the river yesterday evening." "Yes; Tarbox and I were practising to exhibit to-day; but I could not do much with my dull old skates."

Wade breakfasted deliberately, as a holiday morning allowed, and then walked down to the Foundry. There would be no work done to-day. except by a small gang keeping up the fires. The Superintendent wished only to give his First Semi-Annual Report an hour's polishing, before he joined all Dunderbunk on the ice.

It was a halcyon day, worthy of its motto, "Peace on earth, good-will to men." The air was electric, the sun overflowing with jolly shine, the river smooth and sheeny from the hither bank to the snowy mountains opposite.

"I wish I were Rembrandt, to paint this grand shadowy interior," thought Wade, as he entered the silent, deserted Foundry. "With the gleam of the snow in my eyes, it looks deliciously warm and chiaroscuro. When the men