e arc-light; beneath them, the dark, shuffling,
huddling line of humanity moved uneasily in the discomfort of the keen
wind.

At twelve o 'clock, each unknown, unidentified human unit in that line,
as he reaches the window, puts forth his hand for the loaf, and
thrusting it beneath his coat, if he be so fortunate as to have one, or
under his arm, vanishes....

Whither? As well ask: Whence came he?

Well up towards the bakery, because the hour was early, stood Champney
Googe, unknown, unidentified as yet by three men, Father Honore and two
detectives, who from the dark archway of a sunken area farther down the
street were scanning this bread-line. The man for whom they were
searching held his head low. An old broad-brimmed felt hat was jammed
over his forehead, almost covering his eyes. The face beneath its shadow
was sunken, drawn; the upper lip, chin, and cheeks covered with a three
weeks' growth of hair that had been blackened with soot. The long period
of wandering in the Maine wilderness had reduced his clothes to a
minimum. His shoes were worn, the leather split, showing bare flesh.
Like hundreds of others in like case, he found himself forced into this
line, even at the risk of detection, through the despairing desperation
of hunger. There was nothing left for him but this--that is, if he were
not to starve. And after this, there remained for him but one thing, one
choice out of three final ones--he knew this well: flight and
expatriation, the act of grace by which a man frees himself from this
life, or the penitentiary. Which should it be?

"Never that last, never!" he said over and over again to himself during
this last month. "Never, never _that_!"

It was the horror of that which spurred him to unimaginable exertion in
the wilderness in order to escape the detectives on his track; to put
them off the scent; to lead them to the Canada border and so induce them
to cross it in their search. He had succeeded; and thereafter his one
thought was to get to New York, to that metropolis where the human unit
is reduced to the zero power, and can dive under, even vanish, to
reappear only momently on the surface to breathe. But having reached the
city, by stolen rides on the top of freight cars, and plunging again
into its maelstrom, he found himself still in the clutch of this
unnamable horror. Docks, piers, bridges, stations were become mere
detective terminals to him--things to be shunned at all cost. The long
pe