or of his imprisonment confident of what he should find; and it
was as if a home had become hostile and unwelcoming.

"Guess I'll have to be movin' outta this town," he told himself.
"Seems as if I'd stopped here long enough!"

He had time to confirm this judgment in the days that followed. The
approach of winter was bringing its inevitable slackness to all work
carried on in the open air, and the big works could afford to be
scrupulous about the characters of the men they engaged; and the
little tradesmen feared the ban of the police. His slender store of
money came to an end, and but for occasional jobs of wood-splitting
as the supplies of winter fuel came in, it would have been difficult
merely to live. As it was, he dragged his belt tighter about the
waist of the old linen blouse and showed to the daylight a face whose
whimsicality and vagueness were darkened with a touch of the
saturnine. He showed it likewise to Miss Pilgrim when one day she
passed him at the noon hour, hurrying past the corner on which he
stood, wrapped to the eyes in her greatcoat.

She recognized him suddenly and stopped.

"Good morning," she said. "It's, it's a cold day, isn't it?"

Waters had his back to the wall for shelter, and though he stood thus
out of the wind, the air drenched him with its chill like water. He
smiled slowly with stiff lips at the brisk outdoor pink in her
cheeks.

"This ain't cold," he answered. "You won't call this cold when you've
been through a winter here."

"No," she agreed. "I suppose I won't." She shifted diffidently,
looking at him with her frank eyes. "Are you getting along all
right," she asked.

He smiled again; in her meaning there was only one kind of "all
right" and "all wrong." "Why, yes," he replied. "I'm all right, Miss
Pilgrim; an' if I wasn't, I'd know where to come."

She nodded eagerly. "Yes; I don't want you to forget. I I'll always
be glad to do everything I can."

"Sure; I know that," he replied. "An' you? You makin' out all right
too, Miss Pilgrim? That Vice-vice-Consulate o' yours keepin' you
pretty busy?"

The brisk pink flooded across her face in a quick flush, and her
mouth drooped. But her eyes, as always, were steady against his.

"There hasn't been anybody yet," she answered, with a look that
deprecated his smile.

He hastened to be sympathetic. "Too bad!" he said. "With a room like
that all ready an' waitin' too. But maybe it's only that things is
kind o' slack just no