ad been, acted like a tonic. Then
suddenly something pathetic in that miserable retreating back struck
the other man, who also had reason to turn his back on and retreat
from his kind; a strange understanding came over him. He seemed to
know exactly how that other man, slinking away from his door, felt.

"Hullo, you!" he called out.

The man apparently did not hear, or did not think the shout meant for
him. He kept on.

Carroll shouted again. "Hullo, you! Come back here!"

Then the man turned, and his half-scared, half-defiant face fronted
Carroll. He growled an inarticulate inquiry.

"Come back here!" repeated Carroll.

The tramp came slowly, suspiciously, one hand slyly lifted as one
sees a wary animal with a paw ready for possible attack.

"Wait here," said Carroll, indicating the stoop with a gesture, "and
I will see if I can find something for you to eat."

The man reached the door and paused, and remained standing, still
with that wary lift of hand and foot in readiness for defence or
flight, while Carroll rummaged in the pantry, which was a lean
larder. At last he emerged with half a pie and a piece of cake. He
extended them to the tramp, who viewed them critically and mumbled
something about meat.

"Take these and clear out, or leave them and clear out!" shouted
Carroll, and again the sense of exhilaration was over him.

The man took the proffered food and slunk rapidly out of the yard.

Carroll laughed, and closed and bolted the kitchen door, which Marie
had left unlocked. Then he returned to the den and sat down with the
morning paper and a cigar. He skimmed over the contents, the rumors
of wars, and cruelties, the Wall Street items, the burglaries, the
fires, the defalcations, the suicides, the stresses of the world,
creation old, enduring in their fluctuations and recurrences like the
sea, beating with the same force upon the hearts of every new
generation. Carroll, as he sat there idly smoking, fell to thinking
abstractedly in that vein. He had a conception of a possible ocean of
elemental emotion, of joy and passion, of crime and agony and greed,
ever swelling and ebbing upon the shores of humanity. He had a mind
of psychological cast, although it had been turned of a necessity
into other channels. Finally he turned wholly to himself and his own
difficulties, which had reached possibly the worst crisis of his
life. He had never been in such a hard place as this. He had
heretofore seen a loop-