Now let me tell you something." He thrust his
hands into the air and shouted. "The mine manager did not close this
place. I closed it. You jeered at Cracked McGregor, a better man than
any of you. You have had fun with me--laughing at me. Now I jeer at
you." He ran up the steps and unlocking the door stood in the doorway.
"Pay the money you owe this bakery and there will be bread for sale
here," he called, and went in and locked the door.
The miners walked off up the street. The boy stood within the bakery,
his hands trembling. "I've told them something," he thought, "I've
shown them they can't make a fool of me." He went up the stairway to
the rooms above. By the window his mother sat, her head in her hands,
looking down into the street. He sat in a chair and thought of the
situation. "They will be back here and smash the place like they tore
up that garden," he said.
The next evening Beaut sat in the darkness on the steps before the
bakery. In his hands he held a hammer. A dull hatred of the town and
of the miners burned in his brain. "I will make it hot for some of
them if they come here," he thought. He hoped they would come. As he
looked at the hammer in his hand a phrase from the lips of the drunken
old oculist babbling of Napoleon came into his mind.
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