, agile old woman ran
through the car, the boy looked across with a look of innocent fun at
the man, and for the first time the two pairs of eyes met. It was not
in Carroll, whatever his stress of mind, to meet a smile like that
without response. He smiled back. Then the boy ducked his head with
fervor, and off came his little cap, like a gentleman.

He was a handsome little fellow, younger than Eddy by a year or two,
fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a most innocent and infantile
expression. He was rather poorly dressed, but he looked well cared
for, and he had the confident and unhesitating regard of a child who
is well-beloved. He had a little package of school-books under his
arm.

Carroll, after returning the child's smile, turned away. He did not
look again, although he felt that the blue eyes with a look of
insistent admiration were steadfastly upon his face. The country
through which the car was now passing was of a strange, convulsive
character. It was torn alike by nature and by man. Storms and winds
had battered at the clayey soil, spade and shovel had upturned it. It
was honey-combed and upheaved. There were roughly shelving hills
overhung with coarse dry grass like an old man's beard, there were
ragged chasms and gulfs, and all in raw reds and toneless browns and
drabs, darkened constantly by the smoke which descended upon them
from the chimneys of the great factories to the right. Over this raw
red and toneless drab surface crawled, on narrow tracks, little
wagons, drawn by plodding old horses, guided by plodding men. Beyond,
the salt river gleamed with a keen brightness like steel. The sky
above it was dull and brooding. The wind was going down. The whole
landscape was desolate, and with a strange, ragged, ignominious
desolation. The earth looked despoiled, insulted, dissected, as if
her sacred inner parts were laid bare by these poor pygmies, the
tools of a few capitalists grubbing at her vitals for the clay which
meant dollars.

In the most desolate part of this desolate country, the car was
stopped, and two Syrians laden with heavy grips got on. These tall,
darkly gaunt men, their sinister picturesqueness thinly disguised by
their Western garb, these Orientals in the midst of the extremest
phase of the New World, passed Carroll with grace, and seated
themselves, with a weary air, and yet an air of ineffable lengths of
time at command, suggestive of anything but weariness. There was
actually, or so C