mmy,
please gif me those bread'n milk."

*****

By now the guests of Mrs. Gerard had come to the entrees--Londonderry
pheasants, escallops of duck, and rissolettes a la pompadour. The wine
was Chateau Latour.

All around the table conversations were going forward gayly. The good
wines had broken up the slight restraint of the early part of the
evening and a spirit of good humour and good fellowship prevailed. Young
Lambert and Mr. Gerard were deep in reminiscences of certain mutual
duck-shooting expeditions. Mrs. Gerard and Mrs. Cedarquist discussed
a novel--a strange mingling of psychology, degeneracy, and analysis
of erotic conditions--which had just been translated from the Italian.
Stephen Lambert and Beatrice disputed over the merits of a Scotch collie
just given to the young lady. The scene was gay, the electric bulbs
sparkled, the wine flashing back the light. The entire table was a vague
glow of white napery, delicate china, and glass as brilliant as crystal.
Behind the guests the serving-men came and went, filling the glasses
continually, changing the covers, serving the entrees, managing the
dinner without interruption, confusion, or the slightest unnecessary
noise.

But Presley could find no enjoyment in the occasion. From that picture
of feasting, that scene of luxury, that atmosphere of decorous,
well-bred refinement, his thoughts went back to Los Muertos and Quien
Sabe and the irrigating ditch at Hooven's. He saw them fall, one by one,
Harran, Annixter, Osterman, Broderson, Hooven. The clink of the wine
glasses was drowned in the explosion of revolvers. The Railroad might
indeed be a force only, which no man could control and for which no man
was responsible, but his friends had been killed, but years of extortion
and oppression had wrung money from all the San Joaquin, money that had
made possible this very scene in which he found himself. Because Magnus
had been beggared, Gerard had become Railroad King; because the farmers
of the valley were poor, these men were rich.

The fancy grew big in his mind, distorted, caricatured, terrible.
Because the farmers had been killed at the irrigation ditch, these
others, Gerard and his family, fed full. They fattened on the blood of
the People, on the blood of the men who had been killed at the ditch.
It was a half-ludicrous, half-horrible "dog eat dog," an unspeakable
cannibalism. Harran, Annixter, and Hooven were being devoured there
under his eyes. These da