ree perch in
twelve hours. At noon he would retire to a bit of level turf around an
angle of the shore and cook his fish, eating them without salt or knife
or fork. He thrust a pointed stick down the mouth of the perch, and
turned it slowly over the blaze. When the grease stopped dripping, he
knew that it was done, and would devour it slowly and with tremendous
relish, picking the bones clean, eating even the head. He remembered
how often he used to do this sort of thing when he was a boy in the
mountains of Placer County, before he became a car-boy at the mine. The
dentist enjoyed himself hugely during these days. The instincts of the
old-time miner were returning. In the stress of his misfortune McTeague
was lapsing back to his early estate.

One evening as he reached home after such a tramp, he was surprised to
find Trina standing in front of what had been Zerkow's house, looking at
it thoughtfully, her finger on her lips.

"What you doing here'?" growled the dentist as he came up. There was a
"Rooms-to-let" sign on the street door of the house.

"Now we've found a place to move to," exclaimed Trina.

"What?" cried McTeague. "There, in that dirty house, where you found
Maria?"

"I can't afford that room in the flat any more, now that you can't get
any work to do."

"But there's where Zerkow killed Maria--the very house--an' you wake up
an' squeal in the night just thinking of it."

"I know. I know it will be bad at first, but I'll get used to it, an'
it's just half again as cheap as where we are now. I was looking at a
room; we can have it dirt cheap. It's a back room over the kitchen. A
German family are going to take the front part of the house and sublet
the rest. I'm going to take it. It'll be money in my pocket."

"But it won't be any in mine," vociferated the dentist, angrily. "I'll
have to live in that dirty rat hole just so's you can save money. I
ain't any the better off for it."

"Find work to do, and then we'll talk," declared Trina. "I'M going to
save up some money against a rainy day; and if I can save more by living
here I'm going to do it, even if it is the house Maria was killed in. I
don't care."

"All right," said McTeague, and did not make any further protest. His
wife looked at him surprised. She could not understand this sudden
acquiescence. Perhaps McTeague was so much away from home of late that
he had ceased to care where or how he lived. But this sudden change
troubled her a litt