found, Uncle Oelbermann, believing that McTeague was
seeking a reconciliation, had told him without hesitation, and, he
added:

"She was in here only yesterday and drew out the balance of her money.
She's been drawing against her money for the last month or so. She's got
it all now, I guess."

"Ah, she's got it all."

The dentist went away from his bootless visit to his wife shaking with
rage, hating her with all the strength of a crude and primitive nature.
He clenched his fists till his knuckles whitened, his teeth ground
furiously upon one another.

"Ah, if I had hold of you once, I'd make you dance. She had five
thousand dollars in that room, while I stood there, not twenty feet
away, and told her I was starving, and she wouldn't give me a dime to
get a cup of coffee with; not a dime to get a cup of coffee. Oh, if I
once get my hands on you!" His wrath strangled him. He clutched at the
darkness in front of him, his breath fairly whistling between his teeth.

That night he walked the streets until the morning, wondering what now
he was to do to fight the wolf away. The morning of the next day towards
ten o'clock he was on Kearney Street, still walking, still tramping the
streets, since there was nothing else for him to do. By and by he
paused on a corner near a music store, finding a momentary amusement in
watching two or three men loading a piano upon a dray. Already half
its weight was supported by the dray's backboard. One of the men, a
big mulatto, almost hidden under the mass of glistening rosewood, was
guiding its course, while the other two heaved and tugged in the rear.
Something in the street frightened the horses and they shied abruptly.
The end of the piano was twitched sharply from the backboard. There was
a cry, the mulatto staggered and fell with the falling piano, and its
weight dropped squarely upon his thigh, which broke with a resounding
crack.

An hour later McTeague had found his job. The music store engaged him as
handler at six dollars a week. McTeague's enormous strength, useless all
his life, stood him in good stead at last.

He slept in a tiny back room opening from the storeroom of the music
store. He was in some sense a watchman as well as handler, and went the
rounds of the store twice every night. His room was a box of a place
that reeked with odors of stale tobacco smoke. The former occupant had
papered the walls with newspapers and had pasted up figures cut out
from the posters