s,
until it was time for supper. Joe did not appear for that function, and
when Martin heard the gardener remark that most likely he was ripping the
slats off the bar, Martin understood. He went to bed immediately
afterward, and in the morning decided that he was greatly rested. Joe
being still absent, Martin procured a Sunday paper and lay down in a
shady nook under the trees. The morning passed, he knew not how. He did
not sleep, nobody disturbed him, and he did not finish the paper. He
came back to it in the afternoon, after dinner, and fell asleep over it.

So passed Sunday, and Monday morning he was hard at work, sorting
clothes, while Joe, a towel bound tightly around his head, with groans
and blasphemies, was running the washer and mixing soft-soap.

"I simply can't help it," he explained. "I got to drink when Saturday
night comes around."

Another week passed, a great battle that continued under the electric
lights each night and that culminated on Saturday afternoon at three
o'clock, when Joe tasted his moment of wilted triumph and then drifted
down to the village to forget. Martin's Sunday was the same as before.
He slept in the shade of the trees, toiled aimlessly through the
newspaper, and spent long hours lying on his back, doing nothing,
thinking nothing. He was too dazed to think, though he was aware that he
did not like himself. He was self-repelled, as though he had undergone
some degradation or was intrinsically foul. All that was god-like in him
was blotted out. The spur of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality
with which to feel the prod of it. He was dead. His soul seemed dead.
He was a beast, a work-beast. He saw no beauty in the sunshine sifting
down through the green leaves, nor did the azure vault of the sky whisper
as of old and hint of cosmic vastness and secrets trembling to
disclosure. Life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its taste was bad
in his mouth. A black screen was drawn across his mirror of inner
vision, and fancy lay in a darkened sick-room where entered no ray of
light. He envied Joe, down in the village, rampant, tearing the slats
off the bar, his brain gnawing with maggots, exulting in maudlin ways
over maudlin things, fantastically and gloriously drunk and forgetful of
Monday morning and the week of deadening toil to come.

A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life. He
was oppressed by a sense of failure. There was reason f