tried to be genial.

"Better'n nothin'," he observed, looking around.

Hurstwood did not take this to himself. He thought it to be an
expression of individual satisfaction, and so did not answer. The
youth imagined he was out of sorts, and set to whistling softly. Seeing
another man asleep, he quit that and lapsed into silence.

Hurstwood made the best of a bad lot by keeping on his clothes and
pushing away the dirty covering from his head, but at last he dozed
in sheer weariness. The covering became more and more comfortable, its
character was forgotten, and he pulled it about his neck and slept.
In the morning he was aroused out of a pleasant dream by several men
stirring about in the cold, cheerless room. He had been back in Chicago
in fancy, in his own comfortable home. Jessica had been arranging to go
somewhere, and he had been talking with her about it. This was so clear
in his mind, that he was startled now by the contrast of this room.
He raised his head, and the cold, bitter reality jarred him into
wakefulness.

"Guess I'd better get up," he said.

There was no water on this floor. He put on his shoes in the cold
and stood up, shaking himself in his stiffness. His clothes felt
disagreeable, his hair bad.

"Hell!" he muttered, as he put on his hat.

Downstairs things were stirring again.

He found a hydrant, with a trough which had once been used for horses,
but there was no towel here, and his handkerchief was soiled from
yesterday. He contented himself with wetting his eyes with the ice-cold
water. Then he sought the foreman, who was already on the ground.

"Had your breakfast yet?" inquired that worthy.

"No," said Hurstwood.

"Better get it, then; your car won't be ready for a little while."

Hurstwood hesitated.

"Could you let me have a meal ticket?" he asked with an effort.

"Here you are," said the man, handing him one.

He breakfasted as poorly as the night before on some fried steak and bad
coffee. Then he went back.

"Here," said the foreman, motioning him, when he came in. "You take this
car out in a few minutes."

Hurstwood climbed up on the platform in the gloomy barn and waited for
a signal. He was nervous, and yet the thing was a relief. Anything was
better than the barn.

On this the fourth day of the strike, the situation had taken a turn for
the worse. The strikers, following the counsel of their leaders and
the newspapers, had struggled peaceably enough. There had been