of something more in him, just a glimmering
bit of soul, that compelled him, at each week-end, to scorch off the
hundred and forty miles. But this was not rest. It was
super-machinelike, and it helped to crush out the glimmering bit of soul
that was all that was left him from former life. At the end of the
seventh week, without intending it, too weak to resist, he drifted down
to the village with Joe and drowned life and found life until Monday
morning.

Again, at the week-ends, he ground out the one hundred and forty miles,
obliterating the numbness of too great exertion by the numbness of still
greater exertion. At the end of three months he went down a third time
to the village with Joe. He forgot, and lived again, and, living, he
saw, in clear illumination, the beast he was making of himself--not by
the drink, but by the work. The drink was an effect, not a cause. It
followed inevitably upon the work, as the night follows upon the day. Not
by becoming a toil-beast could he win to the heights, was the message the
whiskey whispered to him, and he nodded approbation. The whiskey was
wise. It told secrets on itself.

He called for paper and pencil, and for drinks all around, and while they
drank his very good health, he clung to the bar and scribbled.

"A telegram, Joe," he said. "Read it."

Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to
sober him. He looked at the other reproachfully, tears oozing into his
eyes and down his cheeks.

"You ain't goin' back on me, Mart?" he queried hopelessly.

Martin nodded, and called one of the loungers to him to take the message
to the telegraph office.

"Hold on," Joe muttered thickly. "Lemme think."

He held on to the bar, his legs wobbling under him, Martin's arm around
him and supporting him, while he thought.

"Make that two laundrymen," he said abruptly. "Here, lemme fix it."

"What are you quitting for?" Martin demanded.

"Same reason as you."

"But I'm going to sea. You can't do that."

"Nope," was the answer, "but I can hobo all right, all right."

Martin looked at him searchingly for a moment, then cried:-

"By God, I think you're right! Better a hobo than a beast of toil. Why,
man, you'll live. And that's more than you ever did before."

"I was in hospital, once," Joe corrected. "It was beautiful. Typhoid--did
I tell you?"

While Martin changed the telegram to "two laundrymen," Joe went on:-

"I never wanted