. But after that--if over in
Europe the people rise against this war--I don't just see how I can keep
out."

Joe looked at me queerly. And with a curious gruffness,

"I hope you will keep out," he said. "There aren't many women like your
wife."

He pulled an old grip from under his bed and began throwing in a few
books and clothes. From a drawer he swept a few colored shirts, some
underclothes and a small revolver.

"J. K.," I said, "I've been thinking about us. And I think our youth is
gone."

"What's youth?" asked Joe indifferently.

"Youth," I replied, "is the time when you can think anything, feel
anything and go anywhere."

"I'm still going anywhere," he remarked.

"But you can't think anything," I rejoined. "You say I'm tied to a wife
and home. All right, I'm glad I am. But you're tied, too. You're tied to
a creed, Mister Syndicalist--a creed so stiff that you can't think of
anything else."

"All right, I'm glad I am," he echoed. "I'm sorry youth lasted as long
as it did."

He closed his grip and strapped it. Then he took up his hat and coat and
threw a last look about the room where he had lived for a year or more.

"Breaking up home ties," he said with a grin. "Don't come to the boat,"
he added downstairs. "She don't sail for an hour or two and I'll be
asleep in my bunk long before."

"All right. Good-by, J. K.--remember we may meet over there----"

Again that gruffness came into his voice:

"If you do, you'll be taking a mighty big chance," he said. "Good-by,
Bill--it's just possible we may never meet again. Glad to have made your
acquaintance, Kid. Here's wishing you luck."

He turned and went off down the Farm with that long swinging walk of
his, his big heavy shoulders bent rather more than before. And as I
stood looking after him I thought of the lonely winding road that he was
to travel day and night, into slums of cities and in and out among the
camps.

* * * * *

I walked slowly back through the tenements toward the new home among
them that Eleanore had made.

In the summer's night the city streets were still alive with people. I
passed brightly lighted thoroughfares where I saw them in crowds, and I
knew that this tide of people flowed endlessly through the hundreds of
miles of streets that made up the port of New York. Hurrying, idling,
talking and laughing, quarreling, fighting, here stopping to look at
displays in shop windows, there pouring int