frouzy, unkempt, dirty, forlorn; without ambition
further than to fill his belly with the cold leavings from decent folks'
tables; without other pride than to clothe his dirty body with the
cast-off rags and tatters of respectability; without further motive of
life than to roam hither and yon--idle, useless, homeless, aimless. In
all this there is indeed enough of the pathetic, but Sandy Graff in his
utter and complete abasement was even more deeply, tragically sunken
than they. For them there was still some sheltering aegis of secrecy to
conceal some substratum in the uttermost depths of personal depravity;
but for Sandy--all the world knew the story of his life, his struggle,
his fall; all the world could see upon his blotched and bloated face the
outer sign of his inner lusts; and what deeper humiliation can there be
than for all one's world to know how brutish and obscene one may be in
the bottom of one's heart? What deeper shame may any man suffer than to
have his neighbors read upon his blasted front the stamp and seal of
all, all his heart's lust, set there not only as a warning and a lesson,
not only a visible proof how deep below the level of savagery it is
possible for a God-enlightened man to sink, but also for
self-gratulation of those righteous ones that they are not fallen from
God's grace as that man has fallen?

One time East Haven had been Sandy Graff's home, and it was now the
centre of his wanderings, which never extended further than the
immediately neighboring towns. At times he would disappear from East
Haven for weeks, maybe months; then suddenly he would appear again,
pottering aimlessly, harmlessly, around the streets or byways;
wretched, foul, boozed, and sodden with vile rum, which he had procured
no one knew how or where. Maybe at such times of reappearance he would
be seen hanging around some store or street corner, maundering with some
one who had known him in the days of his prosperity, or maybe he would
be found loitering around the kitchen or out-house of some pitying
Bay-Streeter, who also had known him in the days of his dignity and
cleanliness, waiting with helpless patience for scraps of cold victuals
or the dregs of the coffee-pot, for no one drove him away or treated him
with unkindness.

Sandy Graff's father had been a cobbler in Upper Main Street, and he
himself had in time followed the same trade in the same little,
old-fashioned, dingy, shingled, hip-roofed house. In time he h