he offer without
dickering, for it was large enough to serve my ends. It would pay off
all our debts and leave us a hundred dollars to the good. It was the
first time since I married that I had been that much ahead.

That afternoon I saw Murphy and hired of him the top tenement of his
new house. It was in the Italian quarter of the city and my flat
consisted of four rooms. The rent was three dollars a week. Murphy
looked surprised enough at the change in my affairs and I made him
promise not to gossip to the neighbors about where I'd gone.

"Faith, sor," he said, "and they wouldn't believe it if I told them."

This wasn't all I accomplished that day. I bought a pair of overalls
and presented myself at the office of a contractor's agent. I didn't
have any trouble in getting in there and I didn't feel like a beggar
as I took my place in line with about a dozen foreigners. I looked
them over with a certain amount of self-confidence. Most of them were
undersized men with sagging shoulders and primitive faces. With their
big eyes they made me think of shaggy Shetland ponies. Lined up man
for man with my late associates they certainly looked like an inferior
lot. I studied them with curiosity; there must be more in them than
showed on the surface to bring them over here--there must be something
that wasn't in the rest of us for them to make good the way they did.
In the next six months I meant to find out what that was. In the
meantime just sitting there among them I felt as though I had more
elbow room than I had had since I was eighteen. Before me as before
them a continent stretched its great length and breadth. They laughed
and joked among themselves and stared about at everything with eager,
curious eyes. They were ready for anything, and everything was ready
for them--the ditch, the mines, the railroads, the wheat fields.
Wherever things were growing and needed men to help them grow, they
would play their part. They say there's plenty of room at the top,
but there's plenty of room at the bottom, too. It's in the middle that
men get pinched.

I worked my way up to the window where a sallow, pale-faced clerk sat
in front of a big book. He gave me a start, he was such a contrast to
the others. In my new enthusiasm I wanted to ask him why he didn't
come out and get in line the other side of the window. He yawned as he
wrote down my name. I didn't have to answer more than half a dozen
questions before he told me to repor