piles
of pig iron were red with rust. The same little dummy wheezed him into
the dead little town. Even the face of the Gap was a little changed by
the gray scar that man had slashed across its mouth, getting limestone
for the groaning monster of a furnace that was now at peace. The streets
were deserted. A new face fronted him at the desk of the hotel and the
eyes of the clerk showed no knowledge of him when he wrote his name. His
supper was coarse, greasy and miserable, his room was cold (steam heat,
it seemed, had been given up), the sheets were ill-smelling, the mouth
of the pitcher was broken, and the one towel had seen much previous use.
But the water was the same, as was the cool, pungent night-air--both
blessed of God--and they were the sole comforts that were his that
night.

The next day it was as though he were arranging his own funeral, with
but little hope of a resurrection. The tax-collector met him when he
came downstairs--having seen his name on the register.

"You know," he said, "I'll have to add 5 per cent. next month." Hale
smiled.

"That won't be much more," he said, and the collector, a new one,
laughed good-naturedly and with understanding turned away. Mechanically
he walked to the Club, but there was no club--then on to the office of
The Progress--the paper that was the boast of the town. The Progress
was defunct and the brilliant editor had left the hills. A boy with an
ink-smeared face was setting type and a pallid gentleman with glasses
was languidly working a hand-press. A pile of fresh-smelling papers lay
on a table, and after a question or two he picked up one. Two of its
four pages were covered with announcements of suits and sales to satisfy
judgments--the printing of which was the raison d'etre of the noble
sheet. Down the column his eye caught John Hale et al. John Hale et al.,
and he wondered why "the others" should be so persistently anonymous.
There was a cloud of them--thicker than the smoke of coke-ovens. He had
breathed that thickness for a long time, but he got a fresh sense of
suffocation now. Toward the post-office he moved. Around the corner
he came upon one of two brothers whom he remembered as carpenters. He
recalled his inability once to get that gentleman to hang a door for
him. He was a carpenter again now and he carried a saw and a plane.
There was grim humour in the situation. The carpenter's brother had
gone--and he himself could hardly get enough work, he said, to