illed with Saxon. No, he had not had breakfast, nor did he want any
now that he had her. He had only stopped for a shave. He had stood the
barber off, and he had walked all the way from the City Hall because of
lack of the nickel carfare. But he'd like a bath most mighty well, and a
change of clothes. She mustn't come near him until he was clean.

When all this was accomplished, he sat in the kitchen and watched her
cook, noting the driftwood she put in the stove and asking about it.
While she moved about, she told how she had gathered the wood, how she
had managed to live and not be beholden to the union, and by the time
they were seated at the table she was telling him about her meeting with
Mary the night before. She did not mention the five dollars.

Billy stopped chewing the first mouthful of steak. His expression
frightened her. He spat the meat out on his plate.

"You got the money to buy the meat from her," he accused slowly. "You
had no money, no more tick with the butcher, yet here's meat. Am I
right?"

Saxon could only bend her head.

The terrifying, ageless look had come into his face, the bleak and
passionless glaze into his eyes, which she had first seen on the day at
Weasel Park when he had fought with the three Irishmen.

"What else did you buy?" he demanded--not roughly, not angrily, but with
the fearful coldness of a rage that words could not express.

To her surprise, she had grown calm. What did it matter? It was merely
what one must expect, living in Oakland--something to be left behind
when Oakland was a thing behind, a place started from.

"The coffee," she answered. "And the butter."

He emptied his plate of meat and her plate into the frying pan, likewise
the roll of butter and the slice on the table, and on top he poured the
contents of the coffee canister. All this he carried into the back yard
and dumped in the garbage can. The coffee pot he emptied into the sink.
"How much of the money you got left?" he next wanted to know.

Saxon had already gone to her purse and taken it out.

"Three dollars and eighty cents," she counted, handing it to him. "I
paid forty-five cents for the steak."

He ran his eye over the money, counted it, and went to the front door.
She heard the door open and close, and knew that the silver had been
flung into the street. When he came back to the kitchen, Saxon was
already serving him fried potatoes on a clean plate.

"Nothin's too good for the Robertses,