went round the four sides of a square, with the yard for
the vats in the middle. The ladders and passages she passed down were
on the inside, narrow and dimly lighted: she had to grope her way
sometimes. The floors shook constantly with the incessant thud of the
great looms that filled each story, like heavy, monotonous thunder. It
deafened her, made her dizzy, as she went down slowly. It was no short
walk to reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors opened
from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast,
dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was a crowd
of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks
by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell
of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here.
She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who
stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for her with his staff.
Margaret had a quick memory for faces; she thought she had seen this one
before, as she passed,--a dark face, sullen, heavy-lipped, the hair cut
convict-fashion, close to the head. She thought, too, one of the men
muttered "jail-bird," jeering him for his forwardness. "Load for
Clinton! Western Railroad!" sung out a sharp voice behind her, and, as
she went into the street, a train of cars rushed into the hall to be
loaded, and men swarmed out of every corner,--red-faced and pale,
whiskey-bloated and heavy-brained, Irish, Dutch, black, with souls half
asleep somewhere, and the destiny of a nation in their grasp,--hands,
like herself, going through the slow, heavy work, for, as Pike the
manager would have told you, "three dollars a week,--good wages these
tight times." For nothing more? Some other meaning may have fallen
from their faces into this girl's quiet intuition in the instant's
glance,--cheerfuller, remoter aims, hidden in the most sensual
face,--homeliest home-scenes, low climbing ambitions, some delirium of
pleasure to come,--whiskey, if nothing better: aims in life like yours,
differing in degree, needing only to make them the same----did you say
what?

She had reached the street now,--a back-street, a crooked sort of lane
rather, running between endless piles of ware-houses. She hurried down
it to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the country. It was a
long, tiresome walk through the outskirts of the town, where the
dwelling-houses were,--long rows o