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Updated: June 13, 2025
"Here's your tool," said Richard, stirring the chisel with the toe of his boot, "if that's what you're looking for." Torrini advanced a step as if to pick it up, then appeared to alter his mind, hesitated perhaps a dozen seconds, and turning abruptly on his heel walked down the street without a stagger.
Among the exotics in Stillwater, which even boasted a featureless Celestial, who had unobtrusively extinguished himself with a stove-pipe hat, Torrini was the only figure that approached picturesqueness. With his swarthy complexion and large, indolent eyes, in which a southern ferocity slept lightly, he seemed to Richard a piece out of his own foreign experience.
At the foot of the stairs Richard Shackford halted abruptly, and, oblivious of the two children who were softly chattering together in the doorway, caught Margaret's hand in his. "Margaret, Torrini has made a confession that sets at rest all question of my cousin's death." "Do you mean that he" Margaret faltered, and left the sentence unfinished. "No; it was William Durgin, God forgive him!"
After that Torrini dozed rather than slumbered, rousing at brief intervals; and whenever he awoke the feverish activity of his brain incited him to talk, nowe of Italy, and now of matters connected with his experiences in this country. "Naples is a pleasant place!" he broke out in the hush of the midnight, just as Richard was dropping off. "The band plays every afternoon on the Chiaia.
I thought may be if I spoke to you, and told you how it was" "Did Torrini send you?" "Lord, no! He's too proud to send to anybody. He's been so proud since they took off his hand that there has been no doing anything with him. If they was to take off his leg, he would turn into one mass of pride. No, Mr. Shackford, I came of myself." "Where does Torrini live, now?" "In Mitchell's Alley."
Nightly meetings took place at Grimsey's Hall, and the audiences were good-humored and orderly. Torrini advanced some Utopian theories touching a universal distribution of wealth, which were listened to attentively, but failed to produce deep impression. "That's a healthy idea of Torrini's about dervidin' up property," said Jemmy Willson.
"Richard did come home last night, after all," said Mr. Slocum, with a flustered air, seating himself at the breakfast table. Margaret looked up quickly. "I just met Peters on the street, and he told me," added Mr. Slocum. "Richard returned last night, and did not come to us!" "It seems that he watched with Torrini, the man is going to die." "Oh," said Margaret, cooling instantly.
A week passed, and no fresh light was thrown upon the catastrophe, nor did anything occur to rattle the usual surface of life in the village. A man it was Torrini, the Italian got hurt in Dana's iron foundry; one of Blufton's twin girls died; and Mr. Slocum took on a new hand from out of town. That was all.
Torrini has a great deal of that kind of ability; perhaps a trifle too much for his own good or anybody else's. There was never any trouble to speak of among the trades in Stillwater till he and two or three others came here with foreign grievances. These men get three times the pay they ever received in their own land, and are treated like human beings for the first time in their lives.
The flat steel flashed again in the sunlight, but fell harmlessly, and before the blow could be repeated, Richard had knitted his fingers in Torrini's neckerchief and twisted it so tightly that the man gasped. Holding him by this, Richard dragged Torrini across the yard, and let him drop on the sidewalk outside the gate, where he lay in a heap, inert.
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