holds 'em. One time, deliverin' papers at Second an'
Market--there's an awful tough gang of kids hang out there--I got into a
fight with the leader. He hauled off to knock my wind out, an' he landed
square on a book. You ought to seen his face. An' then I landed on
him. An' then his whole gang was goin' to jump on me, only a couple
of iron-molders stepped in an' saw fair play. I gave 'em the books to
hold."

"Who won?" Saxon asked.

"Nobody," the boy confessed reluctantly. "I think I was lickin' him, but
the molders called it a draw because the policeman on the beat stopped
us when we'd only teen fightin' half an hour. But you ought to seen the
crowd. I bet there was five hundred--"

He broke off abruptly and began hauling in his line. Saxon, too, was
hauling in. And in the next couple of hours they caught twenty pounds of
fish between them.

That night, long after dark, the little, half-decked skiff sailed up the
Oakland Estuary. The wind was fair but light, and the boat moved slowly,
towing a long pile which the boy had picked up adrift and announced
as worth three dollars anywhere for the wood that was in it. The tide
flooded smoothly under the full moon, and Saxon recognized the points
they passed--the Transit slip, Sandy Beach, the shipyards, the nail
works, Market street wharf. The boy took the skiff in to a dilapidated
boat-wharf at the foot of Castro street, where the scow schooners, laden
with sand and gravel, lay hauled to the shore in a long row. He insisted
upon an equal division of the fish, because Saxon had helped catch them,
though he explained at length the ethics of flotsam to show her that the
pile was wholly his.

At Seventh and Poplar they separated, Saxon walking on alone to Pine
street with her load of fish. Tired though she was from the long day,
she had a strange feeling of well-being, and, after cleaning the fish,
she fell asleep wondering, when good times came again, if she could
persuade Billy to get a boat and go out with her on Sundays as she had
gone out that day.

CHAPTER VII

She slept all night, without stirring, without dreaming, and awoke
naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She felt her old
self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted, or a shadow had been
swept away from between her and the sun. Her head was clear. The seeming
iron band that had pressed it so hard was gone. She was cheerful. She
even caught herself humming aloud as she divided t