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