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pen up another and yet another path over which I would have to travel in the long journey of life which lay before me. As I kept on, I saw the sun go down in a display of blood-red pyrotechnics. I heard the chatter of the birds in the hedgerows as they settled to rest. Now and again, I passed a tired toiler, with bent head and dragging feet,--his drudgery over for the day, but weighted with the knowledge that it must begin all over again on the morrow and on each succeeding morrow till the crash of his doom. The night breeze came up and darkness gathered round me. A few hours more, and the twinkling lights of Grangeborough came into view. They were welcome lights to me, for the pangs of a healthy hunger were clamouring to be appeased. As it had been with the country some hours before, so was it now with Grangeborough. The town was settling down for the night. It was late. Most of the shops were closing, or already closed. Business was over for the day. People hurried homeward like shadows. I looked about me for a place to dine, but failed, at first, in my quest. Down toward the docks there were brighter lights and correspondingly deeper darknesses. I went along a broad thoroughfare, turned down a narrower one until I found myself among lanes and alleys, jostled by drunken sailors and accosted by wanton women, as they staggered, blinking, from the brightly lighted saloons. My finer sensibilities rose and protested within me, but I had no choice. If I wished to quell my craving for food, there was nothing left for me to do but to brave the foul air and the rough element of one of these sawdust-floored, glass-ornamented whisky palaces, where a snack and a glass of ale, at least, could be purchased. I looked about me and pushed into what seemed the least disreputable one of its kind. I made through the haze of foul air and tobacco smoke to the counter, and stood idly by until the bar-tender should find it convenient to wait upon me. The place was crowded with sea-faring men and the human sediment that is found in and around the docks of all shipping cities; it resounded with a babel of coarse, discordant voices. The greater part of this coterie was gathered round a huge individual, with enormous hands and feet, a stubbly, blue chin,--set, round and aggressive; a nose with a broken bridge spoiled the balance of his podgy face. He had beady eyes and a big, ugly mouth with stained, irregular teet
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