ward lesion. Something broke. It was like a
ship, in a dream, noiselessly striking a rock where no rock is. It
seemed as though the very next thing was to begin going to pieces. He
walked off in the dark shadow of the warehouse, half lifted from his
feet by a vague, wide dismay. And yet he felt no greatness of emotion,
but rather a painful want of it, as if he were here and emotion were
yonder, down-street, or up-street, or around the corner. The ground
seemed slipping from under him. He appeared to have all at once melted
away to nothing. He stopped. He even turned to go back. He felt that if
he should go and put that corn down where he had found it he should feel
himself once more a living thing of substance and emotions. Then it
occurred to him--no, he would keep it, he would take it to Mary; but
himself--he would not touch it; and so he went home.

Mary parched the corn, ground it fine in the coffee-mill and salted and
served it close beside the candle. "It's good white corn," she said,
laughing. "Many a time when I was a child I used to eat this in my
playhouse and thought it delicious. Didn't you? What! not going to eat?"

Richling had told her how he got the corn. Now he told his sensations.
"You eat it, Mary," he said at the end; "you needn't feel so about it;
but if I should eat it I should feel myself a vagabond. It may be
foolish, but I wouldn't touch it for a hundred dollars." A hundred
dollars had come to be his synonyme for infinity.

Mary gazed at him a moment tearfully, and rose, with the dish in her
hand, saying, with a smile, "I'd look pretty, wouldn't I!"

She set it aside, and came and kissed his forehead. By and by she
asked:--

"And so you saw no work, anywhere?"

"Oh, yes!" he replied, in a tone almost free from dejection. "I saw any
amount of work--preparations for a big season. I think I certainly
shall pick up something to-morrow--enough, anyhow, to buy something to
eat with. If we can only hold out a little longer--just a little--I am
sure there'll be plenty to do--for everybody." Then he began to show
distress again. "I could have got work to-day if I had been a carpenter,
or if I'd been a joiner, or a slater, or a bricklayer, or a plasterer,
or a painter, or a hod-carrier. Didn't I try that, and was refused?"

"I'm glad of it," said Mary.

"'Show me your hands,' said the man to me. I showed them. 'You won't
do,' said he."

"I'm glad of it!" said Mary, again.

"No," continued Rich