ntly to her nostrils.
She was looking down upon one of the busiest streets of the city that
people sometimes call the Devil's Own.

Grit had wrested an existence from the debris of this city. Others
have waded ankle-deep in the crowd; but he, a grimy, infinitesimal
molecule, had been at the bottom wholly submerged, where the light of
idealism is not supposed to penetrate. Grit had been a junkman; his
business address--a vacant lot; his only asset--a junk-cart across the
top of which he had strung a belt of jingling, jangling bells that had
called through the cavernous streets more plainly than Grit himself:
"Rags, old iron, bottles, and ra-ags."

This had been Grit's song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he
had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn
himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the
threads had snapped. He had died of old age--in his thirties. And his
junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant
lot just around the corner.

Great Taylor had seen Grit pass along this narrow segment of street,
visible from her window; but his flight had always been swift--pushing
steadily with head bent, never looking up. And so it was not during
his hours of toil that she had known him....

Nell closed the window. She was not going to think of him any more.
"Ain't worth a thought." But everything in the room reminded her of
the man. He had furnished it from his junk-pile. The drawer was
missing from the centre table, the door of the kitchen stove was wired
at the hinges; even the black marble clock, with its headless gilt
figure, and the brown tin boxes marked "Coffee," "Bread," and
"Sugar"--all were junk. And these were the things that Grit, not
without a show of pride, had brought home to her!

Nell sank into a large armchair (with one rung gone) and glowered at
an earthen jug on the shelf. Grit had loved molasses. Every night he
had spilt amber drops of it on the table, and his plate had always
been hard to wash. "Won't have that to do any more," sighed Nell. Back
of the molasses jug, just visible, were the tattered pages of a
coverless book. This had come to Grit together with fifty pounds of
waste paper in gunny-sacks; and though Nell had never undergone the
mental torture of informing herself as to its contents, she had dubbed
the book "Grit's Bible," for he had pawed over it, spelling out the
words, every night for years. It was one