ding and ash-colored face.

"They threw me out o' their damned dope shop!" cried Durkin, with an
only half-simulated thickness of utterance, as he jerked a shaking
thumb toward the lights of the Chinese laundry. "And I guess--I'm--I'm
a bit knocked out!"

For he felt very weak and faint and weary, though the cold rain and the
open night air beat on his upturned face with a sting that was
gratefully refreshing.

"They certainly did make a mess o' you!" chortled the unmoved driver,
as they rumbled westward and took the corner with a skid of the great
wheels that struck fire from even the wet car-tracks. He tucked the
bill down in his oil-coat pocket.

"Feelin' sick, ain't you?"

"Yes!"

"Where d'you want to go?" he asked more feelingly.

"Where d'you go?" parried Durkin.

"Hoboken Ferry, for th' Lackawanna Number Eight!"

"Then that'll do me," answered the other weakly.

He leaned back in his high and rocking seat, grasping the back rail
with his right hand. He felt as if the waves of a troubled and
tumultuous sea were throwing him up, broken and torn, on some island of
possible safety. He felt dizzy, as though he were being tossed and
plunged forward to some narrow bar of impending release and rest. He
did not ask of himself just what seas boomed and thundered on the
opposing side of that narrow stretch of promised security. He knew
that they were there, and he knew that the time would soon come when he
must face and feel them about him. He had once demanded rest; but he
knew that there now could be no rest for him, until the end. He might
hide for a day or two, like a hunted animal with its hurt, but the
hounds of destiny would soon be at his heels again. All he asked, he
told himself, was his man's due right of momentary relapse, his
breathing spell of quietness. He was already too stained and scarred
with life to look for the staidly upholstered sanctuaries, the padded
seclusions of simple and honest wayfarers. He was broken and undone,
but his day would come again.

He looked at his limp and trailing left hand. To his consternation, he
saw that it dripped blood. He tried to push back his coat sleeve, but
the pain was more than he could endure. So with his right hand he
lifted the helpless arm up before his eyes, as though it were something
not his own flesh and blood, and for the first time saw the splinter of
bone that protruded from the torn flesh, just below the wrist-joint.

He felt