Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/61

Rh voices. And in a few moments there arose from the end of the street the confused clamor of badly treated women and their surly swains. It made Laurent's flesh creep.

"The devils, they're hurting them!"

The innocent boy did not yet understand the oaths, the jerky laughs that became shrill shrieks. The uproar turned the corner of the street, lost itself at the bottom of blind alleys, dispersed, little by little, in the windings of the courts, until the district again fell into dismal and secret silence, a party to the gloom, auspicious for lurking and pairing off in the glutted, wanton night around the Stone Mill.

The next day, those who had yelped and clamored in a heart-rending fashion appeared sprightly, alert, even more full of pranks than before; and in the halls on the ground floor the men, vainglorious and pleased with themselves, jostled each other with an air of connivance, winking to each other, avidly gabbling.

To what mysterious conquests were they alluding, these truculent fellows?

"What! You don't know the packing-room?" cried Vincent Tilbak. "It's the most curious corner of the factory. You must see my crew! Regular bees, they are!"

Tilbak was a sailor, and from the same district as Siska.

Formerly, after a long voyage, having hardly disembarked, he would make for the house of the Paridaels. His clothing of coarse blue cloth exhaled tar, seaweed, brome, the salt water, and all the fragrance of the open, and from his being emanated a perfume no less virile and loyal. To assure himself of a welcome, his pockets were always full of curiosities from