ing on idly from the comfortable shade of the
saloon-deck awning. Griswold's thought vocalized itself in compassionate
musings.

"Poor devils! They've been told that they are freemen, and perhaps they
believe it. But surely no slave of the Toulon galleys was ever in
bitterer bondage.... Free?--yes, free to toil and sweat, to bear
burdens and to be driven like cattle under the yoke! Oh, good
Lord!--look at that!"

The ant procession had attacked the final tier of boxes in the lading,
and one of the burden-bearers, a white man, had stumbled and fallen like
a crushed pack-animal under a load too heavy for him. Griswold was
beside him in a moment. The man could not rise, and Griswold dragged him
not untenderly out of the way of the others.

"Why didn't you stand from under and let it drop?" he demanded gruffly,
as an offset to the womanish tenderness; but when the man gasped for
breath and groaned, he took another tone: "Where are you hurt?"

The crushed one sat up and spat blood.

"I don't know: inside, somewheres. I been dyin' on my feet any time for
a year or two back."

"Consumption?" queried Griswold, briefly.

"I reckon so."

"Then you have no earthly business in a deck crew. Don't you know that?"

The man's smile was a ghastly face-wrinkling.

"Reckon I hain't got any business anywheres--out'n a horspital or a hole
in the ground. But I kind o' thought I'd like to be planted 'longside
the woman and the childer, if I could make out some way to git there."

"Where?"

The consumptive named a small river town in Iowa.

"And you were going to work your passage on the boat?"

"I was allowin' to try for it. But I reckon I'm done up, now."

In Griswold impulse was the dominant chord always struck by an appeal to
his sympathies. His compassion went straight to the mark, as it was sure
to do when his pockets were not empty.

"What is the fare by rail to your town?" he inquired.

"I don't know: I never asked. Somewheres between twenty and thirty
dollars, I reckon; and that's more money than I've seen sence the woman
died."

Griswold hastily counted out a hundred dollars from his pocket fund and
thrust the money into the man's hand.

"Take that and change places with me," he commanded, slipping on the
mask of gruffness again. "Pay your fare on the train, and I'll take your
job on the boat. Don't be a fool!" he added, when the man put his face
in his hands and began to choke. "It's a fair enough exchange, a