The Octopus, by Frank Norris

Part 11 out of 12

and taking with her Minna and little Hilda, had gone to San
Francisco--had gone to find work, abandoning Los Muertos and her
home forever. Presley only learned of the departure of the
family after fifteen days had elapsed.

At once, however, the suspicion forced itself upon him that Mrs.
Hooven--and Minna, too for the matter of that--country-bred,
ignorant of city ways, might easily come to grief in the hard,
huge struggle of city life. This suspicion had swiftly hardened
to a conviction, acting at last upon which Presley had followed
them to San Francisco, bent upon finding and assisting them.

The house to which Presley was led by the address in his
memorandum book was a cheap but fairly decent hotel near the
power house of the Castro Street cable. He inquired for Mrs.
Hooven.

The landlady recollected the Hoovens perfectly.

"German woman, with a little girl-baby, and an older daughter,
sure. The older daughter was main pretty. Sure I remember them,
but they ain't here no more. They left a week ago. I had to ask
them for their room.

As it was, they owed a week's room-rent. Mister, I can't afford----"

"Well, do you know where they went? Did you hear what address
they had their trunk expressed to?"

"Ah, yes, their trunk," vociferated the woman, clapping her hands
to her hips, her face purpling. "Their trunk, ah, sure. I got
their trunk, and what are you going to do about it? I'm holding
it till I get my money. What have you got to say about it?
Let's hear it."

Presley turned away with a gesture of discouragement, his heart
sinking. On the street corner he stood for a long time, frowning
in trouble and perplexity. His suspicions had been only too well
founded. So long ago as a week, the Hoovens had exhausted all
their little store of money. For seven days now they had been
without resources, unless, indeed, work had been found; "and
what," he asked himself, "what work in God's name could they find
to do here in the city?"

Seven days! He quailed at the thought of it. Seven days without
money, knowing not a soul in all that swarming city. Ignorant of
city life as both Minna and her mother were, would they even
realise that there were institutions built and generously endowed
for just such as they? He knew them to have their share of
pride, the dogged sullen pride of the peasant; even if they knew
of charitable organisations, would they, could they bring
themselves to apply there? A poignant anxiety thrust itself
sharply into Presley's heart. Where were they now? Where had
they slept last night? Where breakfasted this morning? Had
there even been any breakfast this morning? Had there even been
any bed last night? Lost, and forgotten in the plexus of the
city's life, what had befallen them? Towards what fate was the
ebb tide of the streets drifting them?

Was this to be still another theme wrought out by iron hands upon
the old, the world-old, world-wide keynote? How far were the
consequences of that dreadful day's work at the irrigating ditch
to reach? To what length was the tentacle of the monster to
extend?

Presley returned toward the central, the business quarter of the
city, alternately formulating and dismissing from his mind plan
after plan for the finding and aiding of Mrs. Hooven and her
daughters. He reached Montgomery Street, and turned toward his
club, his imagination once more reviewing all the causes and
circumstances of the great battle of which for the last eighteen
months he had been witness.

All at once he paused, his eye caught by a sign affixed to the
wall just inside the street entrance of a huge office building,
and smitten with an idea, stood for an instant motionless, upon
the sidewalk, his eyes wide, his fists shut tight.

The building contained the General Office of the Pacific and
Southwestern Railroad. Large though it was, it nevertheless, was
not pretentious, and during his visits to the city, Presley must
have passed it, unheeding, many times.

But for all that it was the stronghold of the enemy--the centre
of all that vast ramifying system of arteries that drained the
life-blood of the State; the nucleus of the web in which so many
lives, so many fortunes, so many destinies had been enmeshed.
From this place--so he told himself--had emanated that policy of
extortion, oppression and injustice that little by little had
shouldered the ranchers from their rights, till, their backs to
the wall, exasperated and despairing they had turned and fought
and died. From here had come the orders to S. Behrman, to Cyrus
Ruggles and to Genslinger, the orders that had brought Dyke to a
prison, that had killed Annixter, that had ruined Magnus, that
had corrupted Lyman. Here was the keep of the castle, and here,
behind one of those many windows, in one of those many offices,
his hand upon the levers of his mighty engine, sat the master,
Shelgrim himself.

Instantly, upon the realisation of this fact an ungovernable
desire seized upon Presley, an inordinate curiosity. Why not
see, face to face, the man whose power was so vast, whose will
was so resistless, whose potency for evil so limitless, the man
who for so long and so hopelessly they had all been fighting. By
reputation he knew him to be approachable; why should he not then
approach him? Presley took his resolution in both hands. If he
failed to act upon this impulse, he knew he would never act at
all. His heart beating, his breath coming short, he entered the
building, and in a few moments found himself seated in an ante-
room, his eyes fixed with hypnotic intensity upon the frosted
pane of an adjoining door, whereon in gold letters was inscribed
the word, "PRESIDENT."

In the end, Presley had been surprised to find that Shelgrim was
still in. It was already very late, after six o'clock, and the
other offices in the building were in the act of closing. Many
of them were already deserted. At every instant, through the
open door of the ante-room, he caught a glimpse of clerks, office
boys, book-keepers, and other employees hurrying towards the
stairs and elevators, quitting business for the day. Shelgrim,
it seemed, still remained at his desk, knowing no fatigue,
requiring no leisure.

"What time does Mr. Shelgrim usually go home?" inquired Presley
of the young man who sat ruling forms at the table in the ante-
room.

"Anywhere between half-past six and seven," the other answered,
adding, "Very often he comes back in the evening."

And the man was seventy years old. Presley could not repress a
murmur of astonishment. Not only mentally, then, was the
President of the P. and S. W. a giant. Seventy years of age and
still at his post, holding there with the energy, with a
concentration of purpose that would have wrecked the health and
impaired the mind of many men in the prime of their manhood.

But the next instant Presley set his teeth.

"It is an ogre's vitality," he said to himself. "Just so is the
man-eating tiger strong. The man should have energy who has
sucked the life-blood from an entire People."

A little electric bell on the wall near at hand trilled a
warning. The young man who was ruling forms laid down his pen,
and opening the door of the President's office, thrust in his
head, then after a word exchanged with the unseen occupant of the
room, he swung the door wide, saying to Presley:

"Mr. Shelgrim will see you, sir."

Presley entered a large, well lighted, but singularly barren
office. A well-worn carpet was on the floor, two steel
engravings hung against the wall, an extra chair or two stood
near a large, plain, littered table. That was absolutely all,
unless he excepted the corner wash-stand, on which was set a
pitcher of ice water, covered with a clean, stiff napkin. A man,
evidently some sort of manager's assistant, stood at the end of
the table, leaning on the back of one of the chairs. Shelgrim
himself sat at the table.

He was large, almost to massiveness. An iron-grey beard and a
mustache that completely hid the mouth covered the lower part of
his face. His eyes were a pale blue, and a little watery; here
and there upon his face were moth spots. But the enormous
breadth of the shoulders was what, at first, most vividly forced
itself upon Presley's notice. Never had he seen a broader man;
the neck, however, seemed in a manner to have settled into the
shoulders, and furthermore they were humped and rounded, as if to
bear great responsibilities, and great abuse.

At the moment he was wearing a silk skull-cap, pushed to one side
and a little awry, a frock coat of broadcloth, with long sleeves,
and a waistcoat from the lower buttons of which the cloth was
worn and, upon the edges, rubbed away, showing the metal
underneath. At the top this waistcoat was unbuttoned and in the
shirt front disclosed were two pearl studs.

Presley, uninvited, unnoticed apparently, sat down. The
assistant manager was in the act of making a report. His voice
was not lowered, and Presley heard every word that was spoken.

The report proved interesting. It concerned a book-keeper in the
office of the auditor of disbursements. It seems he was at most
times thoroughly reliable, hard-working, industrious, ambitious.
But at long intervals the vice of drunkenness seized upon the man
and for three days rode him like a hag. Not only during the
period of this intemperance, but for the few days immediately
following, the man was useless, his work untrustworthy. He was a
family man and earnestly strove to rid himself of his habit; he
was, when sober, valuable. In consideration of these facts, he
had been pardoned again and again.

"You remember, Mr. Shelgrim," observed the manager, "that you
have more than once interfered in his behalf, when we were
disposed to let him go. I don't think we can do anything with
him, sir. He promises to reform continually, but it is the same
old story. This last time we saw nothing of him for four days.
Honestly, Mr. Shelgrim, I think we ought to let Tentell out. We
can't afford to keep him. He is really losing us too much money.
Here's the order ready now, if you care to let it go."

There was a pause. Presley all attention, listened breathlessly.
The assistant manager laid before his President the typewritten
order in question. The silence lengthened; in the hall outside,
the wrought-iron door of the elevator cage slid to with a clash.
Shelgrim did not look at the order. He turned his swivel chair
about and faced the windows behind him, looking out with unseeing
eyes. At last he spoke:

"Tentell has a family, wife and three children. How much do we
pay him?"

"One hundred and thirty."

"Let's double that, or say two hundred and fifty. Let's see how
that will do."

"Why--of course--if you say so, but really, Mr. Shelgrim"

"Well, we'll try that, anyhow."

Presley had not time to readjust his perspective to this new
point of view of the President of the P. and S. W. before the
assistant manager had withdrawn. Shelgrim wrote a few memoranda
on his calendar pad, and signed a couple of letters before
turning his attention to Presley. At last, he looked up and
fixed the young man with a direct, grave glance. He did not
smile. It was some time before he spoke. At last, he said:

"Well, sir."

Presley advanced and took a chair nearer at hand. Shelgrim
turned and from his desk picked up and consulted Presley's card.
Presley observed that he read without the use of glasses.

"You," he said, again facing about, "you are the young man who
wrote the poem called 'The Toilers.'"

"Yes, sir."

"It seems to have made a great deal of talk. I've read it, and
I've seen the picture in Cedarquist's house, the picture you took
the idea from."

Presley, his senses never more alive, observed that, curiously
enough, Shelgrim did not move his body. His arms moved, and his
head, but the great bulk of the man remained immobile in its
place, and as the interview proceeded and this peculiarity
emphasised itself, Presley began to conceive the odd idea that
Shelgrim had, as it were, placed his body in the chair to rest,
while his head and brain and hands went on working independently.
A saucer of shelled filberts stood near his elbow, and from time
to time he picked up one of these in a great thumb and forefinger
and put it between his teeth.

"I've seen the picture called 'The Toilers,'" continued Shelgrim,
"and of the two, I like the picture better than the poem."

"The picture is by a master," Presley hastened to interpose.

"And for that reason," said Shelgrim, "it leaves nothing more to
be said. You might just as well have kept quiet. There's only
one best way to say anything. And what has made the picture of
'The Toilers' great is that the artist said in it the BEST that
could be said on the subject."

"I had never looked at it in just that light," observed Presley.
He was confused, all at sea, embarrassed. What he had expected
to find in Shelgrim, he could not have exactly said. But he had
been prepared to come upon an ogre, a brute, a terrible man of
blood and iron, and instead had discovered a sentimentalist and
an art critic. No standards of measurement in his mental
equipment would apply to the actual man, and it began to dawn
upon him that possibly it was not because these standards were
different in kind, but that they were lamentably deficient in
size. He began to see that here was the man not only great, but
large; many-sided, of vast sympathies, who understood with equal
intelligence, the human nature in an habitual drunkard, the
ethics of a masterpiece of painting, and the financiering and
operation of ten thousand miles of railroad.

"I had never looked at it in just that light," repeated Presley.
"There is a great deal in what you say."

"If I am to listen," continued Shelgrim, "to that kind of talk, I
prefer to listen to it first hand. I would rather listen to what
the great French painter has to say, than to what YOU have to say
about what he has already said."

His speech, loud and emphatic at first, when the idea of what he
had to say was fresh in his mind, lapsed and lowered itself at
the end of his sentences as though he had already abandoned and
lost interest in that thought, so that the concluding words were
indistinct, beneath the grey beard and mustache. Also at times
there was the faintest suggestion of a lisp.

"I wrote that poem," hazarded Presley, "at a time when I was
terribly upset. I live," he concluded, "or did live on the Los
Muertos ranch in Tulare County--Magnus Derrick's ranch."

"The Railroad's ranch LEASED to Mr. Derrick," observed Shelgrim.

Presley spread out his hands with a helpless, resigned gesture.

"And," continued the President of the P. and S. W. with grave
intensity, looking at Presley keenly, "I suppose you believe I am
a grand old rascal."

"I believe," answered Presley, "I am persuaded----" He hesitated,
searching for his words.

"Believe this, young man," exclaimed Shelgrim, laying a thick
powerful forefinger on the table to emphasise his words, "try to
believe this--to begin with--THAT RAILROADS BUILD THEMSELVES.
Where there is a demand sooner or later there will be a supply.
Mr. Derrick, does he grow his wheat? The Wheat grows itself.
What does he count for? Does he supply the force? What do I
count for? Do I build the Railroad? You are dealing with
forces, young man, when you speak of Wheat and the Railroads, not
with men. There is the Wheat, the supply. It must be carried to
feed the People. There is the demand. The Wheat is one force,
the Railroad, another, and there is the law that governs them--
supply and demand. Men have only little to do in the whole
business. Complications may arise, conditions that bear hard on
the individual--crush him maybe--BUT THE WHEAT WILL BE CARRIED TO
FEED THE PEOPLE as inevitably as it will grow. If you want to
fasten the blame of the affair at Los Muertos on any one person,
you will make a mistake. Blame conditions, not men."

"But--but," faltered Presley, "you are the head, you control the
road."

"You are a very young man. Control the road! Can I stop it? I
can go into bankruptcy if you like. But otherwise if I run my
road, as a business proposition, I can do nothing. I can not
control it. It is a force born out of certain conditions, and I--
no man--can stop it or control it. Can your Mr. Derrick stop
the Wheat growing? He can burn his crop, or he can give it away,
or sell it for a cent a bushel--just as I could go into
bankruptcy--but otherwise his Wheat must grow. Can any one stop
the Wheat? Well, then no more can I stop the Road."

Presley regained the street stupefied, his brain in a whirl.
This new idea, this new conception dumfounded him. Somehow, he
could not deny it. It rang with the clear reverberation of
truth. Was no one, then, to blame for the horror at the
irrigating ditch? Forces, conditions, laws of supply and demand--
were these then the enemies, after all? Not enemies; there was
no malevolence in Nature. Colossal indifference only, a vast
trend toward appointed goals. Nature was, then, a gigantic
engine, a vast cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with
a heart of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no
tolerance; crushing out the human atom standing in its way, with
nirvanic calm, the agony of destruction sending never a jar,
never the faintest tremour through all that prodigious mechanism
of wheels and cogs.
He went to his club and ate his supper alone, in gloomy
agitation. He was sombre, brooding, lost in a dark maze of
gloomy reflections. However, just as he was rising from the
table an incident occurred that for the moment roused him and
sharply diverted his mind.

His table had been placed near a window and as he was sipping his
after-dinner coffee, he happened to glance across the street.
His eye was at once caught by the sight of a familiar figure.
Was it Minna Hooven? The figure turned the street corner and was
lost to sight; but it had been strangely like. On the moment,
Presley had risen from the table and, clapping on his hat, had
hurried into the streets, where the lamps were already beginning
to shine.

But search though he would, Presley could not again come upon the
young woman, in whom he fancied he had seen the daughter of the
unfortunate German. At last, he gave up the hunt, and returning
to his club--at this hour almost deserted--smoked a few
cigarettes, vainly attempted to read from a volume of essays in
the library, and at last, nervous, distraught, exhausted, retired
to his bed.

But none the less, Presley had not been mistaken. The girl whom
he had tried to follow had been indeed Minna Hooven.

When Minna, a week before this time, had returned to the lodging
house on Castro Street, after a day's unsuccessful effort to find
employment, and was told that her mother and Hilda had gone, she
was struck speechless with surprise and dismay. She had never
before been in any town larger than Bonneville, and now knew not
which way to turn nor how to account for the disappearance of her
mother and little Hilda. That the landlady was on the point of
turning them out, she understood, but it had been agreed that the
family should be allowed to stay yet one more day, in the hope
that Minna would find work. Of this she reminded the land-lady.
But this latter at once launched upon her such a torrent of
vituperation, that the girl was frightened to speechless
submission.

"Oh, oh," she faltered, "I know. I am sorry. I know we owe you
money, but where did my mother go? I only want to find her."

"Oh, I ain't going to be bothered," shrilled the other. "How do
I know?"

The truth of the matter was that Mrs. Hooven, afraid to stay in
the vicinity of the house, after her eviction, and threatened
with arrest by the landlady if she persisted in hanging around,
had left with the woman a note scrawled on an old blotter, to be
given to Minna when she returned. This the landlady had lost.
To cover her confusion, she affected a vast indignation, and a
turbulent, irascible demeanour.

"I ain't going to be bothered with such cattle as you," she
vociferated in Minna's face. "I don't know where your folks is.
Me, I only have dealings with honest people. I ain't got a word
to say so long as the rent is paid. But when I'm soldiered out
of a week's lodging, then I'm done. You get right along now. I
don't know you. I ain't going to have my place get a bad name by
having any South of Market Street chippies hanging around. You
get along, or I'll call an officer."

Minna sought the street, her head in a whirl. It was about five
o'clock. In her pocket was thirty-five cents, all she had in the
world. What now?

All at once, the Terror of the City, that blind, unreasoned fear
that only the outcast knows, swooped upon her, and clutched her
vulture-wise, by the throat.

Her first few days' experience in the matter of finding
employment, had taught her just what she might expect from this
new world upon which she had been thrown. What was to become of
her? What was she to do, where was she to go? Unanswerable,
grim questions, and now she no longer had herself to fear for.
Her mother and the baby, little Hilda, both of them equally
unable to look after themselves, what was to become of them,
where were they gone? Lost, lost, all of them, herself as well.
But she rallied herself, as she walked along. The idea of her
starving, of her mother and Hilda starving, was out of all
reason. Of course, it would not come to that, of course not. It
was not thus that starvation came. Something would happen, of
course, it would--in time. But meanwhile, meanwhile, how to get
through this approaching night, and the next few days. That was
the thing to think of just now.

The suddenness of it all was what most unnerved her. During all
the nineteen years of her life, she had never known what it meant
to shift for herself. Her father had always sufficed for the
family; he had taken care of her, then, all of a sudden, her
father had been killed, her mother snatched from her. Then all
of a sudden there was no help anywhere. Then all of a sudden a
terrible voice demanded of her, "Now just what can you do to keep
yourself alive?" Life faced her; she looked the huge stone image
squarely in the lustreless eyes.

It was nearly twilight. Minna, for the sake of avoiding
observation--for it seemed to her that now a thousand prying
glances followed her--assumed a matter-of-fact demeanour, and
began to walk briskly toward the business quarter of the town.

She was dressed neatly enough, in a blue cloth skirt with a blue
plush belt, fairly decent shoes, once her mother's, a pink shirt
waist, and jacket and a straw sailor. She was, in an unusual
fashion, pretty. Even her troubles had not dimmed the bright
light of her pale, greenish-blue eyes, nor faded the astonishing
redness of her lips, nor hollowed her strangely white face. Her
blue-black hair was trim. She carried her well-shaped, well-
rounded figure erectly. Even in her distress, she observed that
men looked keenly at her, and sometimes after her as she went
along. But this she noted with a dim sub-conscious faculty. The
real Minna, harassed, terrified, lashed with a thousand
anxieties, kept murmuring under her breath:

"What shall I do, what shall I do, oh, what shall I do, now?"

After an interminable walk, she gained Kearney Street, and held
it till the well-lighted, well-kept neighbourhood of the shopping
district gave place to the vice-crowded saloons and concert halls
of the Barbary Coast. She turned aside in avoidance of this,
only to plunge into the purlieus of Chinatown, whence only she
emerged, panic-stricken and out of breath, after a half hour of
never-to-be-forgotten terrors, and at a time when it had grown
quite dark.

On the corner of California and Dupont streets, she stood a long
moment, pondering.

I MUST do something," she said to herself. "I must do
SOMETHING."
She was tired out by now, and the idea occurred to her to enter
the Catholic church in whose shadow she stood, and sit down and
rest. This she did. The evening service was just being
concluded. But long after the priests and altar boys had
departed from the chancel, Minna still sat in the dim, echoing
interior, confronting her desperate situation as best she might.

Two or three hours later, the sexton woke her. The church was
being closed; she must leave. Once more, chilled with the sharp
night air, numb with long sitting in the same attitude, still
oppressed with drowsiness, confused, frightened, Minna found
herself on the pavement. She began to be hungry, and, at length,
yielding to the demand that every moment grew more imperious,
bought and eagerly devoured a five-cent bag of fruit. Then, once
more she took up the round of walking.

At length, in an obscure street that branched from Kearney
Street, near the corner of the Plaza, she came upon an
illuminated sign, bearing the inscription, "Beds for the Night,
15 and 25 cents."

Fifteen cents! Could she afford it? It would leave her with
only that much more, that much between herself and a state of
privation of which she dared not think; and, besides, the
forbidding look of the building frightened her. It was dark,
gloomy, dirty, a place suggestive of obscure crimes and hidden
terrors. For twenty minutes or half an hour, she hesitated,
walking twice and three times around the block. At last, she
made up her mind. Exhaustion such as she had never known,
weighed like lead upon her shoulders and dragged at her heels.
She must sleep. She could not walk the streets all night. She
entered the door-way under the sign, and found her way up a
filthy flight of stairs. At the top, a man in a blue checked
"jumper" was filling a lamp behind a high desk. To him Minna
applied.

"I should like," she faltered, "to have a room--a bed for the
night. One of those for fifteen cents will be good enough, I
think."

"Well, this place is only for men," said the man, looking up from
the lamp.

"Oh," said Minna, "oh--I--I didn't know."

She looked at him stupidly, and he, with equal stupidity,
returned the gaze. Thus, for a long moment, they held each
other's eyes.

"I--I didn't know," repeated Minna.

"Yes, it's for men," repeated the other.
She slowly descended the stairs, and once more came out upon the
streets.

And upon those streets that, as the hours advanced, grew more and
more deserted, more and more silent, more and more oppressive
with the sense of the bitter hardness of life towards those who
have no means of living, Minna Hooven spent the first night of
her struggle to keep her head above the ebb-tide of the city's
sea, into which she had been plunged.

Morning came, and with it renewed hunger. At this time, she had
found her way uptown again, and towards ten o'clock was sitting
upon a bench in a little park full of nurse-maids and children.
A group of the maids drew their baby-buggies to Minna's bench,
and sat down, continuing a conversation they had already begun.
Minna listened. A friend of one of the maids had suddenly thrown
up her position, leaving her "madame" in what would appear to
have been deserved embarrassment.

"Oh," said Minna, breaking in, and lying with sudden unwonted
fluency, "I am a nurse-girl. I am out of a place. Do you think
I could get that one?"

The group turned and fixed her--so evidently a country girl--with
a supercilious indifference.

"Well, you might try," said one of them. "Got good references?"

"References?" repeated Minna blankly. She did not know what this
meant.

"Oh, Mrs. Field ain't the kind to stick about references," spoke
up the other, "she's that soft. Why, anybody could work her."

"I'll go there," said Minna. "Have you the address?" It was told
to her.

"Lorin," she murmured. "Is that out of town?"

"Well, it's across the Bay."

"Across the Bay."

"Um. You're from the country, ain't you?"

"Yes. How--how do I get there? Is it far?"

"Well, you take the ferry at the foot of Market Street, and then
the train on the other side. No, it ain't very far. Just ask
any one down there. They'll tell you."

It was a chance; but Minna, after walking down to the ferry
slips, found that the round trip would cost her twenty cents. If
the journey proved fruitless, only a dime would stand between her
and the end of everything. But it was a chance; the only one
that had, as yet, presented itself. She made the trip.

And upon the street-railway cars, upon the ferryboats, on the
locomotives and way-coaches of the local trains, she was reminded
of her father's death, and of the giant power that had reduced
her to her present straits, by the letters, P. and S. W. R. R.
To her mind, they occurred everywhere. She seemed to see them in
every direction. She fancied herself surrounded upon every hand
by the long arms of the monster.

Minute after minute, her hunger gnawed at her. She could not
keep her mind from it. As she sat on the boat, she found herself
curiously scanning the faces of the passengers, wondering how
long since such a one had breakfasted, how long before this other
should sit down to lunch.

When Minna descended from the train, at Lorin on the other side
of the Bay, she found that the place was one of those suburban
towns, not yet become fashionable, such as may be seen beyond the
outskirts of any large American city. All along the line of the
railroad thereabouts, houses, small villas--contractors'
ventures--were scattered, the advantages of suburban lots and
sites for homes being proclaimed in seven-foot letters upon
mammoth bill-boards close to the right of way.
Without much trouble, Minna found the house to which she had been
directed, a pretty little cottage, set back from the street and
shaded by palms, live oaks, and the inevitable eucalyptus. Her
heart warmed at the sight of it. Oh, to find a little niche for
herself here, a home, a refuge from those horrible city streets,
from the rat of famine, with its relentless tooth. How she would
work, how strenuously she would endeavour to please, how patient
of rebuke she would be, how faithful, how conscientious. Nor
were her pretensions altogether false; upon her, while at home,
had devolved almost continually the care of the baby Hilda, her
little sister. She knew the wants and needs of children.

Her heart beating, her breath failing, she rang the bell set
squarely in the middle of the front door.

The lady of the house herself, an elderly lady, with pleasant,
kindly face, opened the door. Minna stated her errand.

"But I have already engaged a girl," she said.

"Oh," murmured Minna, striving with all her might to maintain
appearances. "Oh--I thought perhaps--" She turned away.

"I'm sorry," said the lady. Then she added, "Would you care to
look after so many as three little children, and help around in
light housework between whiles?"

"Yes, ma'am."
"Because my sister--she lives in North Berkeley, above here--
she's looking far a girl. Have you had lots of experience? Got
good references?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, I'll give you the address. She lives up in North
Berkeley."

She turned back into the house a moment, and returned, handing
Minna a card.

"That's where she lives--careful not to BLOT it, child, the ink's
wet yet--you had better see her."

"Is it far? Could I walk there?"

"My, no; you better take the electric cars, about six blocks
above here."

When Minna arrived in North Berkeley, she had no money left. By
a cruel mistake, she had taken a car going in the wrong
direction, and though her error was rectified easily enough, it
had cost her her last five-cent piece. She was now to try her
last hope. Promptly it crumbled away. Like the former, this
place had been already filled, and Minna left the door of the
house with the certainty that her chance had come to naught, and
that now she entered into the last struggle with life--the death
struggle--shorn of her last pitiful defence, her last safeguard,
her last penny.

As she once more resumed her interminable walk, she realised she
was weak, faint; and she knew that it was the weakness of
complete exhaustion, and the faintness of approaching starvation.
Was this the end coming on? Terror of death aroused her.

"I MUST, I MUST do something, oh, anything. I must have
something to eat."

At this late hour, the idea of pawning her little jacket occurred
to her, but now she was far away from the city and its pawnshops,
and there was no getting back.

She walked on. An hour passed. She lost her sense of direction,
became confused, knew not where she was going, turned corners and
went up by-streets without knowing why, anything to keep moving,
for she fancied that so soon as she stood still, the rat in the
pit of her stomach gnawed more eagerly.

At last, she entered what seemed to be, if not a park, at least
some sort of public enclosure. There were many trees; the place
was beautiful; well-kept roads and walks led sinuously and
invitingly underneath the shade. Through the trees upon the
other side of a wide expanse of turf, brown and sear under the
summer sun, she caught a glimpse of tall buildings and a
flagstaff. The whole place had a vaguely public, educational
appearance, and Minna guessed, from certain notices affixed to
the trees, warning the public against the picking of flowers,
that she had found her way into the grounds of the State
University. She went on a little further. The path she was
following led her, at length, into a grove of gigantic live oaks,
whose lower branches all but swept the ground. Here the grass
was green, the few flowers in bloom, the shade very thick. A
more lovely spot she had seldom seen. Near at hand was a bench,
built around the trunk of the largest live oak, and here, at
length, weak from hunger, exhausted to the limits of her
endurance, despairing, abandoned, Minna Hooven sat down to
enquire of herself what next she could do.

But once seated, the demands of the animal--so she could believe--
became more clamorous, more insistent. To eat, to rest, to be
safely housed against another night, above all else, these were
the things she craved; and the craving within her grew so mighty
that she crisped her poor, starved hands into little fists, in an
agony of desire, while the tears ran from her eyes, and the sobs
rose thick from her breast and struggled and strangled in her
aching throat.

But in a few moments Minna was aware that a woman, apparently of
some thirty years of age, had twice passed along the walk in
front of the bench where she sat, and now, as she took more
notice of her, she remembered that she had seen her on the ferry-
boat coming over from the city.

The woman was gowned in silk, tightly corseted, and wore a hat of
rather ostentatious smartness. Minna became convinced that the
person was watching her, but before she had a chance to act upon
this conviction she was surprised out of all countenance by the
stranger coming up to where she sat and speaking to her.

"Here is a coincidence," exclaimed the new-comer, as she sat
down; "surely you are the young girl who sat opposite me on the
boat. Strange I should come across you again. I've had you in
mind ever since."

On this nearer view Minna observed that the woman's face bore
rather more than a trace of enamel and that the atmosphere about
was impregnated with sachet. She was not otherwise conspicuous,
but there was a certain hardness about her mouth and a certain
droop of fatigue in her eyelids which, combined with an
indefinite self-confidence of manner, held Minna's attention.

"Do you know," continued the woman, "I believe you are in
trouble. I thought so when I saw you on the boat, and I think so
now. Are you? Are you in trouble? You're from the country,
ain't you?"

Minna, glad to find a sympathiser, even in this chance
acquaintance, admitted that she was in distress; that she had
become separated from her mother, and that she was indeed from
the country.

"I've been trying to find a situation," she hazarded in
conclusion, "but I don't seem to succeed. I've never been in a
city before, except Bonneville."

"Well, it IS a coincidence," said the other. "I know I wasn't
drawn to you for nothing. I am looking for just such a young
girl as you. You see, I live alone a good deal and I've been
wanting to find a nice, bright, sociable girl who will be a sort
of COMPANION to me. Understand? And there's something about you
that I like. I took to you the moment I saw you on the boat.
Now shall we talk this over?"

Towards the end of the week, one afternoon, as Presley was
returning from his club, he came suddenly face to face with Minna
upon a street corner.

"Ah," he cried, coming toward her joyfully. "Upon my word, I had
almost given you up. I've been looking everywhere for you. I
was afraid you might not be getting along, and I wanted to see if
there was anything I could do. How are your mother and Hilda?
Where are you stopping? Have you got a good place?"

"I don't know where mamma is," answered Minna. "We got
separated, and I never have been able to find her again."

Meanwhile, Presley had been taking in with a quick eye the
details of Minna's silk dress, with its garniture of lace, its
edging of velvet, its silver belt-buckle. Her hair was arranged
in a new way and on her head was a wide hat with a flare to one
side, set off with a gilt buckle and a puff of bright blue plush.
He glanced at her sharply.

"Well, but--but how are you getting on?" he demanded.

Minna laughed scornfully.

"I?" she cried. "Oh, I'VE gone to hell. It was either that or
starvation."

Presley regained his room at the club, white and trembling.
Worse than the worst he had feared had happened. He had not been
soon enough to help. He had failed again. A superstitious fear
assailed him that he was, in a manner, marked; that he was
foredoomed to fail. Minna had come--had been driven to this; and
he, acting too late upon his tardy resolve, had not been able to
prevent it. Were the horrors, then, never to end? Was the
grisly spectre of consequence to forever dance in his vision?
Were the results, the far-reaching results of that battle at the
irrigating ditch to cross his path forever? When would the
affair be terminated, the incident closed? Where was that spot
to which the tentacle of the monster could not reach?

By now, he was sick with the dread of it all. He wanted to get
away, to be free from that endless misery, so that he might not
see what he could no longer help. Cowardly he now knew himself
to be. He thought of himself only with loathing.

Bitterly self-contemptuous that he could bring himself to a
participation in such trivialities, he began to dress to keep his
engagement to dine with the Cedarquists.

He arrived at the house nearly half an hour late, but before he
could take off his overcoat, Mrs. Cedarquist appeared in the
doorway of the drawing-room at the end of the hall. She was
dressed as if to go out.

"My DEAR Presley," she exclaimed, her stout, over-dressed body
bustling toward him with a great rustle of silk. "I never was so
glad. You poor, dear poet, you are thin as a ghost. You need a
better dinner than I can give you, and that is just what you are
to have."

"Have I blundered?" Presley hastened to exclaim. "Did not Mr.
Cedarquist mention Friday evening?"

"No, no, no," she cried; "it was he who blundered. YOU
blundering in a social amenity! Preposterous! No; Mr.
Cedarquist forgot that we were dining out ourselves to-night, and
when he told me he had asked you here for the same evening, I
fell upon the man, my dear, I did actually, tooth and nail. But
I wouldn't hear of his wiring you. I just dropped a note to our
hostess, asking if I could not bring you, and when I told her who
you WERE, she received the idea with, oh, empressement. So,
there it is, all settled. Cedarquist and the girls are gone on
ahead, and you are to take the old lady like a dear, dear poet.
I believe I hear the carriage. Allons! En voiture!"

Once settled in the cool gloom of the coupe, odorous of leather
and upholstery, Mrs. Cedarquist exclaimed:

"And I've never told you who you were to dine with; oh, a
personage, really. Fancy, you will be in the camp of your
dearest foes. You are to dine with the Gerard people, one of the
Vice-Presidents of your bete noir, the P. and S. W. Railroad."

Presley started, his fists clenching so abruptly as to all but
split his white gloves. He was not conscious of what he said in
reply, and Mrs. Cedarquist was so taken up with her own endless
stream of talk that she did not observe his confusion.

"Their daughter Honora is going to Europe next week; her mother
is to take her, and Mrs. Gerard is to have just a few people to
dinner--very informal, you know--ourselves, you and, oh, I don't
know, two or three others. Have you ever seen Honora? The
prettiest little thing, and will she be rich? Millions, I would
not dare say how many. Tiens. Nous voici."

The coupe drew up to the curb, and Presley followed Mrs.
Cedarquist up the steps to the massive doors of the great house.
In a confused daze, he allowed one of the footmen to relieve him
of his hat and coat; in a daze he rejoined Mrs. Cedarquist in a
room with a glass roof, hung with pictures, the art gallery, no
doubt, and in a daze heard their names announced at the entrance
of another room, the doors of which were hung with thick, blue
curtains.

He entered, collecting his wits for the introductions and
presentations that he foresaw impended.

The room was very large, and of excessive loftiness. Flat,
rectagonal pillars of a rose-tinted, variegated marble, rose from
the floor almost flush with the walls, finishing off at the top
with gilded capitals of a Corinthian design, which supported the
ceiling. The ceiling itself, instead of joining the walls at
right angles, curved to meet them, a device that produced a sort
of dome-like effect. This ceiling was a maze of golden
involutions in very high relief, that adjusted themselves to form
a massive framing for a great picture, nymphs and goddesses,
white doves, golden chariots and the like, all wreathed about
with clouds and garlands of roses. Between the pillars around
the sides of the room were hangings of silk, the design--of a
Louis Quinze type--of beautiful simplicity and faultless taste.
The fireplace was a marvel. It reached from floor to ceiling;
the lower parts, black marble, carved into crouching Atlases,
with great muscles that upbore the superstructure. The design of
this latter, of a kind of purple marble, shot through with white
veinings, was in the same style as the design of the silk
hangings. In its midst was a bronze escutcheon, bearing an
undecipherable monogram and a Latin motto. Andirons of brass,
nearly six feet high, flanked the hearthstone.

The windows of the room were heavily draped in sombre brocade and
ecru lace, in which the initials of the family were very
beautifully worked. But directly opposite the fireplace, an
extra window, lighted from the adjoining conservatory, threw a
wonderful, rich light into the apartment. It was a Gothic window
of stained glass, very large, the centre figures being armed
warriors, Parsifal and Lohengrin; the one with a banner, the
other with a swan. The effect was exquisite, the window a
veritable masterpiece, glowing, flaming, and burning with a
hundred tints and colours--opalescent, purple, wine-red, clouded
pinks, royal blues, saffrons, violets so dark as to be almost
black.

Under foot, the carpet had all the softness of texture of grass;
skins (one of them of an enormous polar bear) and rugs of silk
velvet were spread upon the floor. A Renaissance cabinet of
ebony, many feet taller than Presley's head, and inlaid with
ivory and silver, occupied one corner of the room, while in its
centre stood a vast table of Flemish oak, black, heavy as iron,
massive. A faint odour of sandalwood pervaded the air. From the
conservatory near-by, came the splashing of a fountain. A row of
electric bulbs let into the frieze of the walls between the
golden capitals, and burning dimly behind hemispheres of clouded
glass, threw a subdued light over the whole scene.

Mrs. Gerard came forward.

"This is Mr. Presley, of course, our new poet of whom we are all
so proud. I was so afraid you would be unable to come. You have
given me a real pleasure in allowing me to welcome you here."

The footman appeared at her elbow.

"Dinner is served, madame," he announced.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When Mrs. Hooven had left the boarding-house on Castro Street,
she had taken up a position on a neighbouring corner, to wait for
Minna's reappearance. Little Hilda, at this time hardly more
than six years of age, was with her, holding to her hand.

Mrs. Hooven was by no means an old woman, but hard work had aged
her. She no longer had any claim to good looks. She no longer
took much interest in her personal appearance. At the time of
her eviction from the Castro Street boarding-house, she wore a
faded black bonnet, garnished with faded artificial flowers of
dirty pink. A plaid shawl was about her shoulders. But this day
of misfortune had set Mrs. Hooven adrift in even worse condition
than her daughter. Her purse, containing a miserable handful of
dimes and nickels, was in her trunk, and her trunk was in the
hands of the landlady. Minna had been allowed such reprieve as
her thirty-five cents would purchase. The destitution of Mrs.
Hooven and her little girl had begun from the very moment of her
eviction.

While she waited for Minna, watching every street car and every
approaching pedestrian, a policeman appeared, asked what she did,
and, receiving no satisfactory reply, promptly moved her on.

Minna had had little assurance in facing the life struggle of the
city. Mrs. Hooven had absolutely none. In her, grief, distress,
the pinch of poverty, and, above all, the nameless fear of the
turbulent, fierce life of the streets, had produced a numbness,
an embruted, sodden, silent, speechless condition of dazed mind,
and clogged, unintelligent speech. She was dumb, bewildered,
stupid, animated but by a single impulse. She clung to life, and
to the life of her little daughter Hilda, with the blind tenacity
of purpose of a drowning cat.

Thus, when ordered to move on by the officer, she had silently
obeyed, not even attempting to explain her situation. She walked
away to the next street-crossing. Then, in a few moments
returned, taking up her place on the corner near the boarding-
house, spying upon the approaching cable cars, peeping anxiously
down the length of the sidewalks.

Once more, the officer ordered her away, and once more,
unprotesting, she complied. But when for the third time the
policeman found her on the forbidden spot, he had lost his
temper. This time when Mrs. Hooven departed, he had followed
her, and when, bewildered, persistent, she had attempted to turn
back, he caught her by the shoulder.

"Do you want to get arrested, hey?" he demanded. "Do you want me
to lock you up? Say, do you, speak up?"

The ominous words at length reached Mrs. Hooven's comprehension.
Arrested! She was to be arrested. The countrywoman's fear of
the Jail nipped and bit eagerly at her unwilling heels. She
hurried off, thinking to return to her post after the policeman
should have gone away. But when, at length, turning back, she
tried to find the boarding-house, she suddenly discovered that
she was on an unfamiliar street. Unwittingly, no doubt, she had
turned a corner. She could not retrace her steps. She and Hilda
were lost.

"Mammy, I'm tired," Hilda complained.

Her mother picked her up.

"Mammy, where're we gowun, mammy?"

Where, indeed? Stupefied, Mrs. Hooven looked about her at the
endless blocks of buildings, the endless procession of vehicles
in the streets, the endless march of pedestrians on the
sidewalks. Where was Minna; where was she and her baby to sleep
that night? How was Hilda to be fed?

She could not stand still. There was no place to sit down; but
one thing was left, walk.

Ah, that via dolorosa of the destitute, that chemin de la croix
of the homeless. Ah, the mile after mile of granite pavement
that MUST be, MUST be traversed. Walk they must. Move, they
must; onward, forward, whither they cannot tell; why, they do not
know. Walk, walk, walk with bleeding feet and smarting joints;
walk with aching back and trembling knees; walk, though the
senses grow giddy with fatigue, though the eyes droop with sleep,
though every nerve, demanding rest, sets in motion its tiny alarm
of pain. Death is at the end of that devious, winding maze of
paths, crossed and re-crossed and crossed again. There is but
one goal to the via dolorosa; there is no escape from the central
chamber of that labyrinth. Fate guides the feet of them that are
set therein. Double on their steps though they may, weave in and
out of the myriad corners of the city's streets, return, go
forward, back, from side to side, here, there, anywhere, dodge,
twist, wind, the central chamber where Death sits is reached
inexorably at the end.

Sometimes leading and sometimes carrying Hilda, Mrs. Hooven set
off upon her objectless journey. Block after block she walked,
street after street. She was afraid to stop, because of the
policemen. As often as she so much as slackened her pace, she
was sure to see one of these terrible figures in the distance,
watching her, so it seemed to her, waiting for her to halt for
the fraction of a second, in order that he might have an excuse
to arrest her.

Hilda fretted incessantly.

"Mammy, where're we gowun? Mammy, I'm tired." Then, at last,
for the first time, that plaint that stabbed the mother's heart:

"Mammy, I'm hungry."

"Be qui-ut, den," said Mrs. Hooven. "Bretty soon we'll hev der
subber."

Passers-by on the sidewalk, men and women in the great six
o'clock homeward march, jostled them as they went along. With
dumb, dull curiousness, she looked into one after another of the
limitless stream of faces, and she fancied she saw in them every
emotion but pity. The faces were gay, were anxious, were
sorrowful, were mirthful, were lined with thought, or were merely
flat and expressionless, but not one was turned toward her in
compassion. The expressions of the faces might be various, but
an underlying callousness was discoverable beneath every mask.
The people seemed removed from her immeasurably; they were
infinitely above her. What was she to them, she and her baby,
the crippled outcasts of the human herd, the unfit, not able to
survive, thrust out on the heath to perish?

To beg from these people did not yet occur to her. There was no
pride, however, in the matter. She would have as readily asked
alms of so many sphinxes.

She went on. Without willing it, her feet carried her in a wide
circle. Soon she began to recognise the houses; she had been in
that street before. Somehow, this was distasteful to her; so,
striking off at right angles, she walked straight before her for
over a dozen blocks. By now, it was growing darker. The sun had
set. The hands of a clock on the power-house of a cable line
pointed to seven. No doubt, Minna had come long before this
time, had found her mother gone, and had--just what had she done,
just what COULD she do? Where was her daughter now? Walking the
streets herself, no doubt. What was to become of Minna, pretty
girl that she was, lost, houseless and friendless in the maze of
these streets? Mrs. Hooven, roused from her lethargy, could not
repress an exclamation of anguish. Here was misfortune indeed;
here was calamity. She bestirred herself, and remembered the
address of the boarding-house. She might inquire her way back
thither. No doubt, by now the policeman would be gone home for
the night. She looked about. She was in the district of modest
residences, and a young man was coming toward her, carrying a new
garden hose looped around his shoulder.

"Say, Meest'r; say, blease----"

The young man gave her a quick look and passed on, hitching the
coil of hose over his shoulder. But a few paces distant, he
slackened in his walk and fumbled in his vest pocket with his
fingers. Then he came back to Mrs. Hooven and put a quarter into
her hand.

Mrs. Hooven stared at the coin stupefied. The young man
disappeared. He thought, then, that she was begging. It had
come to that; she, independent all her life, whose husband had
held five hundred acres of wheat land, had been taken for a
beggar. A flush of shame shot to her face. She was about to
throw the money after its giver. But at the moment, Hilda again
exclaimed:

"Mammy, I'm hungry."

With a movement of infinite lassitude and resigned acceptance of
the situation, Mrs. Hooven put the coin in her pocket. She had
no right to be proud any longer. Hilda must have food.

That evening, she and her child had supper at a cheap restaurant
in a poor quarter of the town, and passed the night on the
benches of a little uptown park.

Unused to the ways of the town, ignorant as to the customs and
possibilities of eating-houses, she spent the whole of her
quarter upon supper for herself and Hilda, and had nothing left
wherewith to buy a lodging.

The night was dreadful; Hilda sobbed herself to sleep on her
mother's shoulder, waking thereafter from hour to hour, to
protest, though wrapped in her mother's shawl, that she was cold,
and to enquire why they did not go to bed. Drunken men snored
and sprawled near at hand. Towards morning, a loafer, reeking of
alcohol, sat down beside her, and indulged in an incoherent
soliloquy, punctuated with oaths and obscenities. It was not
till far along towards daylight that she fell asleep.

She awoke to find it broad day. Hilda--mercifully--slept. Her
mother's limbs were stiff and lame with cold and damp; her head
throbbed. She moved to another bench which stood in the rays of
the sun, and for a long two hours sat there in the thin warmth,
till the moisture of the night that clung to her clothes was
evaporated.

A policeman came into view. She woke Hilda, and carrying her in
her arms, took herself away.

"Mammy," began Hilda as soon as she was well awake; "Mammy, I'm
hungry. I want mein breakfest."

"Sure, sure, soon now, leedle tochter."

She herself was hungry, but she had but little thought of that.
How was Hilda to be fed? She remembered her experience of the
previous day, when the young man with the hose had given her
money. Was it so easy, then, to beg? Could charity be had for
the asking? So it seemed; but all that was left of her sturdy
independence revolted at the thought. SHE beg! SHE hold out the
hand to strangers!

"Mammy, I'm hungry."

There was no other way. It must come to that in the end. Why
temporise, why put off the inevitable? She sought out a
frequented street where men and women were on their way to work.
One after another, she let them go by, searching their faces,
deterred at the very last moment by some trifling variation of
expression, a firm set mouth, a serious, level eyebrow, an
advancing chin. Then, twice, when she had made a choice, and
brought her resolution to the point of speech, she quailed,
shrinking, her ears tingling, her whole being protesting against
the degradation. Every one must be looking at her. Her shame
was no doubt the object of an hundred eyes.

"Mammy, I'm hungry," protested Hilda again.

She made up her mind. What, though, was she to say? In what
words did beggars ask for assistance?

She tried to remember how tramps who had appeared at her back
door on Los Muertos had addressed her; how and with what formula
certain mendicants of Bonneville had appealed to her. Then,
having settled upon a phrase, she approached a whiskered
gentleman with a large stomach, walking briskly in the direction
of the town.

"Say, den, blease hellup a boor womun."

The gentleman passed on.

"Perhaps he doand hear me," she murmured.

Two well-dressed women advanced, chattering gayly.

"Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun."

One of the women paused, murmuring to her companion, and from her
purse extracted a yellow ticket which she gave to Mrs. Hooven
with voluble explanations. But Mrs. Hooven was confused, she did
not understand. What could the ticket mean? The women went on
their way.

The next person to whom she applied was a young girl of about
eighteen, very prettily dressed.

"Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun."

In evident embarrassment, the young girl paused and searched in
her little pocketbook.
"I think I have--I think--I have just ten cents here somewhere,"
she murmured again and again.

In the end, she found a dime, and dropped it into Mrs. Hooven's
palm.

That was the beginning. The first step once taken, the others
became easy. All day long, Mrs. Hooven and Hilda followed the
streets, begging, begging. Here it was a nickel, there a dime,
here a nickel again. But she was not expert in the art, nor did
she know where to buy food the cheapest; and the entire day's
work resulted only in barely enough for two meals of bread, milk,
and a wretchedly cooked stew. Tuesday night found the pair once
more shelterless.

Once more, Mrs. Hooven and her baby passed the night on the park
benches. But early on Wednesday morning, Mrs. Hooven found
herself assailed by sharp pains and cramps in her stomach. What
was the cause she could not say; but as the day went on, the
pains increased, alternating with hot flushes over all her body,
and a certain weakness and faintness. As the day went on, the
pain and the weakness increased. When she tried to walk, she
found she could do so only with the greatest difficulty. Here
was fresh misfortune. To beg, she must walk. Dragging herself
forward a half-block at a time, she regained the street once
more. She succeeded in begging a couple of nickels, bought a bag
of apples from a vender, and, returning to the park, sank
exhausted upon a bench.

Here she remained all day until evening, Hilda alternately
whimpering for her bread and milk, or playing languidly in the
gravel walk at her feet. In the evening, she started out again.
This time, it was bitter hard. Nobody seemed inclined to give.
Twice she was "moved on" by policemen. Two hours' begging
elicited but a single dime. With this, she bought Hilda's bread
and milk, and refusing herself to eat, returned to the bench--the
only home she knew--and spent the night shivering with cold,
burning with fever.

From Wednesday morning till Friday evening, with the exception of
the few apples she had bought, and a quarter of a loaf of hard
bread that she found in a greasy newspaper--scraps of a workman's
dinner--Mrs. Hooven had nothing to eat. In her weakened
condition, begging became hourly more difficult, and such little
money as was given her, she resolutely spent on Hilda's bread and
milk in the morning and evening.

By Friday afternoon, she was very weak, indeed. Her eyes
troubled her. She could no longer see distinctly, and at times
there appeared to her curious figures, huge crystal goblets of
the most graceful shapes, floating and swaying in the air in
front of her, almost within arm's reach. Vases of elegant forms,
made of shimmering glass, bowed and courtesied toward her. Glass
bulbs took graceful and varying shapes before her vision, now
rounding into globes, now evolving into hour-glasses, now
twisting into pretzel-shaped convolutions.

"Mammy, I'm hungry," insisted Hilda, passing her hands over her
face. Mrs. Hooven started and woke. It was Friday evening.
Already the street lamps were being lit.

"Gome, den, leedle girl," she said, rising and taking Hilda's
hand. "Gome, den, we go vind subber, hey?"

She issued from the park and took a cross street, directly away
from the locality where she had begged the previous days. She
had had no success there of late. She would try some other
quarter of the town. After a weary walk, she came out upon Van
Ness Avenue, near its junction with Market Street. She turned
into the avenue, and went on toward the Bay, painfully traversing
block after block, begging of all whom she met (for she no longer
made any distinction among the passers-by) .

"Say, say, den, blease hellup a boor womun."

"Mammy, mammy, I'm hungry."

It was Friday night, between seven and eight. The great deserted
avenue was already dark. A sea fog was scudding overhead, and by
degrees descending lower. The warmth was of the meagerest, and
the street lamps, birds of fire in cages of glass, fluttered and
danced in the prolonged gusts of the trade wind that threshed and
weltered in the city streets from off the ocean.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Presley entered the dining-room of the Gerard mansion with little
Miss Gerard on his arm. The other guests had preceded them--
Cedarquist with Mrs. Gerard; a pale-faced, languid young man
(introduced to Presley as Julian Lambert) with Presley's cousin
Beatrice, one of the twin daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Cedarquist;
his brother Stephen, whose hair was straight as an Indian's, but
of a pallid straw color, with Beatrice's sister; Gerard himself,
taciturn, bearded, rotund, loud of breath, escorted Mrs.
Cedarquist. Besides these, there were one or two other couples,
whose names Presley did not remember.

The dining-room was superb in its appointments. On three sides
of the room, to the height of some ten feet, ran a continuous
picture, an oil painting, divided into long sections by narrow
panels of black oak. The painting represented the personages in
the Romaunt de la Rose, and was conceived in an atmosphere of the
most delicate, most ephemeral allegory. One saw young
chevaliers, blue-eyed, of elemental beauty and purity; women with
crowns, gold girdles, and cloudy wimples; young girls, entrancing
in their loveliness, wearing snow-white kerchiefs, their golden
hair unbound and flowing, dressed in white samite, bearing
armfuls of flowers; the whole procession defiling against a
background of forest glades, venerable oaks, half-hidden
fountains, and fields of asphodel and roses.

Otherwise, the room was simple. Against the side of the wall
unoccupied by the picture stood a sideboard of gigantic size,
that once had adorned the banquet hall of an Italian palace of
the late Renaissance. It was black with age, and against its
sombre surfaces glittered an array of heavy silver dishes and
heavier cut-glass bowls and goblets.

The company sat down to the first course of raw Blue Point
oysters, served upon little pyramids of shaved ice, and the two
butlers at once began filling the glasses of the guests with cool
Haut Sauterne.

Mrs. Gerard, who was very proud of her dinners, and never able to
resist the temptation of commenting upon them to her guests,
leaned across to Presley and Mrs. Cedarquist, murmuring, "Mr.
Presley, do you find that Sauterne too cold? I always believe it
is so bourgeois to keep such a delicate wine as Sauterne on the
ice, and to ice Bordeaux or Burgundy--oh, it is nothing short of
a crime."

"This is from your own vineyard, is it not?" asked Julian
Lambert. "I think I recognise the bouquet."

He strove to maintain an attitude of fin gourmet, unable to
refrain from comment upon the courses as they succeeded one
another.

Little Honora Gerard turned to Presley:

"You know," she explained, "Papa has his own vineyards in
southern France. He is so particular about his wines; turns up
his nose at California wines. And I am to go there next summer.
Ferrieres is the name of the place where our vineyards are, the
dearest village!"
She was a beautiful little girl of a dainty porcelain type, her
colouring low in tone. She wore no jewels, but her little,
undeveloped neck and shoulders, of an exquisite immaturity, rose
from the tulle bodice of her first decollete gown.

"Yes," she continued; "I'm to go to Europe for the first time.
Won't it be gay? And I am to have my own bonne, and Mamma and I
are to travel--so many places, Baden, Homburg, Spa, the Tyrol.
Won't it be gay?"

Presley assented in meaningless words. He sipped his wine
mechanically, looking about that marvellous room, with its
subdued saffron lights, its glitter of glass and silver, its
beautiful women in their elaborate toilets, its deft, correct
servants; its array of tableware--cut glass, chased silver, and
Dresden crockery. It was Wealth, in all its outward and visible
forms, the signs of an opulence so great that it need never be
husbanded. It was the home of a railway "Magnate," a Railroad
King. For this, then, the farmers paid. It was for this that S.
Behrman turned the screw, tightened the vise. It was for this
that Dyke had been driven to outlawry and a jail. It was for
this that Lyman Derrick had been bought, the Governor ruined and
broken, Annixter shot down, Hooven killed.

The soup, puree a la Derby, was served, and at the same time, as
hors d'oeuvres, ortolan patties, together with a tiny sandwich
made of browned toast and thin slices of ham, sprinkled over with
Parmesan cheese. The wine, so Mrs. Gerard caused it to be
understood, was Xeres, of the 1815 vintage.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mrs. Hooven crossed the avenue. It was growing late. Without
knowing it, she had come to a part of the city that experienced
beggars shunned. There was nobody about. Block after block of
residences stretched away on either hand, lighted, full of
people. But the sidewalks were deserted.

"Mammy," whimpered Hilda. "I'm tired, carry me."

Using all her strength, Mrs. Hooven picked her up and moved on
aimlessly.

Then again that terrible cry, the cry of the hungry child
appealing to the helpless mother:

"Mammy, I'm hungry."

"Ach, Gott, leedle girl," exclaimed Mrs. Hooven, holding her
close to her shoulder, the tears starting from her eyes. "Ach,
leedle tochter. Doand, doand, doand. You praik my hairt. I
cen't vind any subber. We got noddings to eat, noddings,
noddings."

"When do we have those bread'n milk again, Mammy?"

"To-morrow--soon--py-and-py, Hilda. I doand know what pecome oaf
us now, what pecome oaf my leedle babby."

She went on, holding Hilda against her shoulder with one arm as
best she might, one hand steadying herself against the fence
railings along the sidewalk. At last, a solitary pedestrian came
into view, a young man in a top hat and overcoat, walking
rapidly. Mrs. Hooven held out a quivering hand as he passed her.

"Say, say, den, Meest'r, blease hellup a boor womun."

The other hurried on.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The fish course was grenadins of bass and small salmon, the
latter stuffed, and cooked in white wine and mushroom liquor.

"I have read your poem, of course, Mr. Presley," observed Mrs.
Gerard. "'The Toilers,' I mean. What a sermon you read us, you
dreadful young man. I felt that I ought at once to 'sell all
that I have and give to the poor.' Positively, it did stir me up.
You may congratulate yourself upon making at least one convert.
Just because of that poem Mrs. Cedarquist and I have started a
movement to send a whole shipload of wheat to the starving people
in India. Now, you horrid reactionnaire, are you satisfied?"

"I am very glad," murmured Presley.

"But I am afraid," observed Mrs. Cedarquist, "that we may be too
late. They are dying so fast, those poor people. By the time
our ship reaches India the famine may be all over."

"One need never be afraid of being 'too late' in the matter of
helping the destitute," answered Presley. "Unfortunately, they
are always a fixed quantity. 'The poor ye have always with
you.'"

"How very clever that is," said Mrs. Gerard.

Mrs. Cedarquist tapped the table with her fan in mild applause.

"Brilliant, brilliant," she murmured, "epigrammatical."

"Honora," said Mrs. Gerard, turning to her daughter, at that
moment in conversation with the languid Lambert, "Honora,
entends-tu, ma cherie, l'esprit de notre jeune Lamartine."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mrs. Hooven went on, stumbling from street to street, holding
Hilda to her breast. Famine gnawed incessantly at her stomach;
walk though she might, turn upon her tracks up and down the
streets, back to the avenue again, incessantly and relentlessly
the torture dug into her vitals. She was hungry, hungry, and if
the want of food harassed and rended her, full-grown woman that
she was, what must it be in the poor, starved stomach of her
little girl? Oh, for some helping hand now, oh, for one little
mouthful, one little nibble! Food, food, all her wrecked body
clamoured for nourishment; anything to numb those gnawing teeth--
an abandoned loaf, hard, mouldered; a half-eaten fruit, yes, even
the refuse of the gutter, even the garbage of the ash heap. On
she went, peering into dark corners, into the areaways, anywhere,
everywhere, watching the silent prowling of cats, the intent
rovings of stray dogs. But she was growing weaker; the pains and
cramps in her stomach returned. Hilda's weight bore her to the
pavement. More than once a great giddiness, a certain wheeling
faintness all but overcame her. Hilda, however, was asleep. To
wake her would only mean to revive her to the consciousness of
hunger; yet how to carry her further? Mrs. Hooven began to fear
that she would fall with her child in her arms. The terror of a
collapse upon those cold pavements glistening with fog-damp
roused her; she must make an effort to get through the night.
She rallied all her strength, and pausing a moment to shift the
weight of her baby to the other arm, once more set off through
the night. A little while later she found on the edge of the
sidewalk the peeling of a banana. It had been trodden upon and
it was muddy, but joyfully she caught it up.

"Hilda," she cried, "wake oop, leedle girl. See, loog den,
dere's somedings to eat. Look den, hey? Dat's goot, ain't it?
Zum bunaner."

But it could not be eaten. Decayed, dirty, all but rotting, the
stomach turned from the refuse, nauseated.

"No, no," cried Hilda, "that's not good. I can't eat it. Oh,
Mammy, please gif me those bread'n milk."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By now the guests of Mrs. Gerard had come to the entrees--
Londonderry pheasants, escallops of duck, and rissolettes a la
pompadour. The wine was Chateau Latour.

All around the table conversations were going forward gayly. The
good wines had broken up the slight restraint of the early part
of the evening and a spirit of good humour and good fellowship
prevailed. Young Lambert and Mr. Gerard were deep in
reminiscences of certain mutual duck-shooting expeditions. Mrs.
Gerard and Mrs. Cedarquist discussed a novel--a strange mingling
of psychology, degeneracy, and analysis of erotic conditions--
which had just been translated from the Italian. Stephen Lambert
and Beatrice disputed over the merits of a Scotch collie just
given to the young lady. The scene was gay, the electric bulbs
sparkled, the wine flashing back the light. The entire table was
a vague glow of white napery, delicate china, and glass as
brilliant as crystal. Behind the guests the serving-men came and
went, filling the glasses continually, changing the covers,
serving the entrees, managing the dinner without interruption,
confusion, or the slightest unnecessary noise.

But Presley could find no enjoyment in the occasion. From that
picture of feasting, that scene of luxury, that atmosphere of
decorous, well-bred refinement, his thoughts went back to Los
Muertos and Quien Sabe and the irrigating ditch at Hooven's. He
saw them fall, one by one, Harran, Annixter, Osterman, Broderson,
Hooven. The clink of the wine glasses was drowned in the
explosion of revolvers. The Railroad might indeed be a force
only, which no man could control and for which no man was
responsible, but his friends had been killed, but years of
extortion and oppression had wrung money from all the San
Joaquin, money that had made possible this very scene in which he
found himself. Because Magnus had been beggared, Gerard had
become Railroad King; because the farmers of the valley were
poor, these men were rich.

The fancy grew big in his mind, distorted, caricatured, terrible.
Because the farmers had been killed at the irrigation ditch,
these others, Gerard and his family, fed full. They fattened on
the blood of the People, on the blood of the men who had been
killed at the ditch. It was a half-ludicrous, half-horrible "dog
eat dog," an unspeakable cannibalism. Harran, Annixter, and
Hooven were being devoured there under his eyes. These dainty
women, his cousin Beatrice and little Miss Gerard, frail,
delicate; all these fine ladies with their small fingers and
slender necks, suddenly were transfigured in his tortured mind
into harpies tearing human flesh. His head swam with the horror
of it, the terror of it. Yes, the People WOULD turn some day,
and turning, rend those who now preyed upon them. It would be
"dog eat dog " again, with positions reversed, and he saw for one
instant of time that splendid house sacked to its foundations,
the tables overturned, the pictures torn, the hangings blazing,
and Liberty, the red-handed Man in the Street, grimed with powder
smoke, foul with the gutter, rush yelling, torch in hand, through
every door.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At ten o'clock Mrs. Hooven fell.

Luckily she was leading Hilda by the hand at the time and the
little girl was not hurt. In vain had Mrs. Hooven, hour after
hour, walked the streets. After a while she no longer made any
attempt to beg; nobody was stirring, nor did she even try to hunt
for food with the stray dogs and cats. She had made up her mind
to return to the park in order to sit upon the benches there, but
she had mistaken the direction, and following up Sacramento
Street, had come out at length, not upon the park, but upon a
great vacant lot at the very top of the Clay Street hill. The
ground was unfenced and rose above her to form the cap of the
hill, all overgrown with bushes and a few stunted live oaks. It
was in trying to cross this piece of ground that she fell. She
got upon her feet again.

"Ach, Mammy, did you hurt yourself?" asked Hilda.

"No, no."

"Is that house where we get those bread'n milk?"

Hilda pointed to a single rambling building just visible in the
night, that stood isolated upon the summit of the hill in a grove
of trees.

"No, no, dere aindt no braid end miluk, leedle tochter."

Hilda once more began to sob.

"Ach, Mammy, please, PLEASE, I want it. I'm hungry."

The jangled nerves snapped at last under the tension, and Mrs.
Hooven, suddenly shaking Hilda roughly, cried out:
"Stop, stop. Doand say ut egen, you. My Gott, you kill me yet."

But quick upon this came the reaction. The mother caught her
little girl to her, sinking down upon her knees, putting her arms
around her, holding her close.

"No, no, gry all so mudge es you want. Say dot you are hongry.
Say ut egen, say ut all de dime, ofer end ofer egen. Say ut,
poor, starfing, leedle babby. Oh, mein poor, leedle tochter. My
Gott, oh, I go crazy bretty soon, I guess. I cen't hellup you.
I cen't ged you noddings to eat, noddings, noddings. Hilda, we
gowun to die togedder. Put der arms roundt me, soh, tighd,
leedle babby. We gowun to die, we gowun to vind Popper. We
aindt gowun to be hongry eny more."

"Vair we go now?" demanded Hilda.

"No places. Mommer's soh tiredt. We stop heir, leedle while,
end rest."

Underneath a large bush that afforded a little shelter from the
wind, Mrs. Hooven lay down, taking Hilda in her arms and wrapping
her shawl about her. The infinite, vast night expanded gigantic
all around them. At this elevation they were far above the city.
It was still. Close overhead whirled the chariots of the fog,
galloping landward, smothering lights, blurring outlines. Soon
all sight of the town was shut out; even the solitary house on
the hilltop vanished. There was nothing left but grey, wheeling
fog, and the mother and child, alone, shivering in a little strip
of damp ground, an island drifting aimlessly in empty space.

Hilda's fingers touched a leaf from the bush and instinctively
closed upon it and carried it to her mouth.

"Mammy," she said, "I'm eating those leaf. Is those good?"

Her mother did not reply.

"You going to sleep, Mammy?" inquired Hilda, touching her face.

Mrs. Hooven roused herself a little.

"Hey? Vat you say? Asleep? Yais, I guess I wass asleep."

Her voice trailed unintelligibly to silence again. She was not,
however, asleep. Her eyes were open. A grateful numbness had
begun to creep over her, a pleasing semi-insensibility. She no
longer felt the pain and cramps of her stomach, even the hunger
was ceasing to bite.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"These stuffed artichokes are delicious, Mrs. Gerard," murmured
young Lambert, wiping his lips with a corner of his napkin.
"Pardon me for mentioning it, but your dinner must be my excuse."

"And this asparagus--since Mr. Lambert has set the bad example,"
observed Mrs. Cedarquist, "so delicate, such an exquisite
flavour. How do you manage?"

"We get all our asparagus from the southern part of the State,
from one particular ranch," explained Mrs. Gerard. "We order it
by wire and get it only twenty hours after cutting. My husband
sees to it that it is put on a special train. It stops at this
ranch just to take on our asparagus. Extravagant, isn't it, but
I simply cannot eat asparagus that has been cut more than a day."

"Nor I," exclaimed Julian Lambert, who posed as an epicure. "I
can tell to an hour just how long asparagus has been picked."

"Fancy eating ordinary market asparagus," said Mrs. Gerard, "that
has been fingered by Heaven knows how many hands."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda, trying to push open Mrs.
Hooven's eyelids, at last closed. "Mammy, don't. You're just
trying to frighten me."

Feebly Hilda shook her by the shoulder. At last Mrs. Hooven's
lips stirred. Putting her head down, Hilda distinguished the
whispered words:

"I'm sick. Go to schleep....Sick....Noddings to eat."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The dessert was a wonderful preparation of alternate layers of
biscuit glaces, ice cream, and candied chestnuts.

"Delicious, is it not?" observed Julian Lambert, partly to
himself, partly to Miss Cedarquist. "This Moscovite fouette--
upon my word, I have never tasted its equal."

"And you should know, shouldn't you?" returned the young lady.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda. "Don't sleep so. I'm
frightenedt."

Repeatedly she shook her; repeatedly she tried to raise the inert
eyelids with the point of her finger. But her mother no longer
stirred. The gaunt, lean body, with its bony face and sunken
eye-sockets, lay back, prone upon the ground, the feet upturned
and showing the ragged, worn soles of the shoes, the forehead and
grey hair beaded with fog, the poor, faded bonnet awry, the poor,
faded dress soiled and torn.
Hilda drew close to her mother, kissing her face, twining her
arms around her neck. For a long time, she lay that way,
alternately sobbing and sleeping. Then, after a long time, there
was a stir. She woke from a doze to find a police officer and
two or three other men bending over her. Some one carried a
lantern. Terrified, smitten dumb, she was unable to answer the
questions put to her. Then a woman, evidently a mistress of the
house on the top of the hill, arrived and took Hilda in her arms
and cried over her.

"I'll take the little girl," she said to the police officer.

"But the mother, can you save her? Is she too far gone?"

"I've sent for a doctor," replied the other.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Just before the ladies left the table, young Lambert raised his
glass of Madeira. Turning towards the wife of the Railroad King,
he said:

"My best compliments for a delightful dinner."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The doctor who had been bending over Mrs. Hooven, rose.

"It's no use," he said; "she has been dead some time--exhaustion
from starvation."

IX

On Division Number Three of the Los Muertos ranch the wheat had
already been cut, and S. Behrman on a certain morning in the
first week of August drove across the open expanse of stubble
toward the southwest, his eyes searching the horizon for the
feather of smoke that would mark the location of the steam
harvester. However, he saw nothing. The stubble extended onward
apparently to the very margin of the world.

At length, S. Behrman halted his buggy and brought out his field
glasses from beneath the seat. He stood up in his place and,
adjusting the lenses, swept the prospect to the south and west.
It was the same as though the sea of land were, in reality, the
ocean, and he, lost in an open boat, were scanning the waste
through his glasses, looking for the smoke of a steamer, hull
down, below the horizon. "Wonder," he muttered, "if they're
working on Four this morning?"

At length, he murmured an "Ah" of satisfaction. Far to the south
into the white sheen of sky, immediately over the horizon, he
made out a faint smudge--the harvester beyond doubt.

Thither S. Behrman turned his horse's head. It was all of an
hour's drive over the uneven ground and through the crackling
stubble, but at length he reached the harvester. He found,
however, that it had been halted. The sack sewers, together with
the header-man, were stretched on the ground in the shade of the
machine, while the engineer and separator-man were pottering
about a portion of the works.

"What's the matter, Billy?" demanded S. Behrman reining up.

The engineer turned about.

"The grain is heavy in here. We thought we'd better increase the
speed of the cup-carrier, and pulled up to put in a smaller
sprocket."

S. Behrman nodded to say that was all right, and added a
question.

"How is she going?"

"Anywheres from twenty-five to thirty sacks to the acre right
along here; nothing the matter with THAT I guess."

"Nothing in the world, Bill."

One of the sack sewers interposed:

"For the last half hour we've been throwing off three bags to the
minute."

"That's good, that's good."

It was more than good; it was " bonanza," and all that division
of the great ranch was thick with just such wonderful wheat.
Never had Los Muertos been more generous, never a season more
successful. S. Behrman drew a long breath of satisfaction. He
knew just how great was his share in the lands which had just
been absorbed by the corporation he served, just how many
thousands of bushels of this marvellous crop were his property.
Through all these years of confusion, bickerings, open hostility
and, at last, actual warfare he had waited, nursing his patience,
calm with the firm assurance of ultimate success. The end, at
length, had come; he had entered into his reward and saw himself
at last installed in the place he had so long, so silently
coveted; saw himself chief of a principality, the Master of the
Wheat.

The sprocket adjusted, the engineer called up the gang and the
men took their places. The fireman stoked vigorously, the two
sack sewers resumed their posts on the sacking platform, putting
on the goggles that kept the chaff from their eyes. The
separator-man and header-man gripped their levers.

The harvester, shooting a column of thick smoke straight upward,
vibrating to the top of the stack, hissed, clanked, and lurched
forward. Instantly, motion sprang to life in all its component
parts; the header knives, cutting a thirty-six foot swath,
gnashed like teeth; beltings slid and moved like smooth flowing
streams; the separator whirred, the agitator jarred and crashed;
cylinders, augers, fans, seeders and elevators, drapers and
chaff-carriers clattered, rumbled, buzzed, and clanged. The
steam hissed and rasped; the ground reverberated a hollow note,
and the thousands upon thousands of wheat stalks sliced and
slashed in the clashing shears of the header, rattled like dry
rushes in a hurricane, as they fell inward, and were caught up by
an endless belt, to disappear into the bowels of the vast brute
that devoured them.

It was that and no less. It was the feeding of some prodigious
monster, insatiable, with iron teeth, gnashing and threshing into
the fields of standing wheat; devouring always, never glutted,
never satiated, swallowing an entire harvest, snarling and
slobbering in a welter of warm vapour, acrid smoke, and blinding,
pungent clouds of chaff. It moved belly-deep in the standing
grain, a hippopotamus, half-mired in river ooze, gorging rushes,
snorting, sweating; a dinosaur wallowing through thick, hot
grasses, floundering there, crouching, grovelling there as its
vast jaws crushed and tore, and its enormous gullet swallowed,
incessant, ravenous, and inordinate.

S. Behrman, very much amused, changed places with one of the sack
sewers, allowing him to hold his horse while he mounted the
sacking platform and took his place. The trepidation and
jostling of the machine shook him till his teeth chattered in his
head. His ears were shocked and assaulted by a myriad-tongued
clamour, clashing steel, straining belts, jarring woodwork, while
the impalpable chaff powder from the separators settled like dust
in his hair, his ears, eyes, and mouth.

Directly in front of where he sat on the platform was the chute
from the cleaner, and from this into the mouth of a half-full
sack spouted an unending gush of grain, winnowed, cleaned,
threshed, ready for the mill.

The pour from the chute of the cleaner had for S. Behrman an
immense satisfaction. Without an instant's pause, a thick
rivulet of wheat rolled and dashed tumultuous into the sack. In
half a minute--sometimes in twenty seconds--the sack was full,
was passed over to the second sewer, the mouth reeved up, and the
sack dumped out upon the ground, to be picked up by the wagons
and hauled to the railroad.

S. Behrman, hypnotised, sat watching that river of grain. All
that shrieking, bellowing machinery, all that gigantic organism,
all the months of labour, the ploughing, the planting, the
prayers for rain, the years of preparation, the heartaches, the
anxiety, the foresight, all the whole business of the ranch, the
work of horses, of steam, of men and boys, looked to this spot--
the grain chute from the harvester into the sacks. Its volume
was the index of failure or success, of riches or poverty. And
at this point, the labour of the rancher ended. Here, at the lip
of the chute, he parted company with his grain, and from here the
wheat streamed forth to feed the world. The yawning mouths of
the sacks might well stand for the unnumbered mouths of the
People, all agape for food; and here, into these sacks, at first
so lean. so flaccid, attenuated like starved stomachs, rushed
the living stream of food, insistent, interminable, filling the
empty, fattening the shrivelled, making it sleek and heavy and
solid.

Half an hour later, the harvester stopped again. The men on the
sacking platform had used up all the sacks. But S. Behrman's
foreman, a new man on Los Muertos, put in an appearance with the
report that the wagon bringing a fresh supply was approaching.

"How is the grain elevator at Port Costa getting on, sir?"

"Finished," replied S. Behrman.

The new master of Los Muertos had decided upon accumulating his
grain in bulk in a great elevator at the tide-water port, where
the grain ships for Liverpool and the East took on their cargoes.
To this end, he had bought and greatly enlarged a building at
Port Costa, that was already in use for that purpose, and to this
elevator all the crop of Los Muertos was to be carried. The P.
and S. W. made S. Behrman a special rate.

"By the way," said S. Behrman to his superintendent, "we're in
luck. Fallon's buyer was in Bonneville yesterday. He's buying
for Fallon and for Holt, too. I happened to run into him, and
I've sold a ship load."

"A ship load!"

"Of Los Muertos wheat. He's acting for some Indian Famine Relief
Committee--lot of women people up in the city--and wanted a whole
cargo. I made a deal with him. There's about fifty thousand
tons of disengaged shipping in San Francisco Bay right now, and
ships are fighting for charters. I wired McKissick and got a
long distance telephone from him this morning. He got me a
barque, the 'Swanhilda.' She'll dock day after to-morrow, and
begin loading."

"Hadn't I better take a run up," observed the superintendent,
"and keep an eye on things?"

"No," answered S. Behrman, "I want you to stop down here, and see
that those carpenters hustle the work in the ranch house.
Derrick will be out by then. You see this deal is peculiar. I'm
not selling to any middle-man--not to Fallon's buyer. He only
put me on to the thing. I'm acting direct with these women
people, and I've got to have some hand in shipping this stuff
myself. But I made my selling figure cover the price of a
charter. It's a queer, mixed-up deal, and I don't fancy it much,
but there's boodle in it. I'll go to Port Costa myself."

A little later on in the day, when S. Behrman had satisfied
himself that his harvesting was going forward favourably, he
reentered his buggy and driving to the County Road turned
southward towards the Los Muertos ranch house. He had not gone
far, however, before he became aware of a familiar figure on
horse-back, jogging slowly along ahead of him. He recognised
Presley; he shook the reins over his horse's back and very soon
ranging up by the side of the young man passed the time of day
with him.

"Well, what brings you down here again, Mr. Presley?" he
observed. "I thought we had seen the last of you."

"I came down to say good-bye to my friends," answered Presley
shortly.

"Going away?"

"Yes--to India."

"Well, upon my word. For your health, hey?"

"Yes."

"You LOOK knocked up," asserted the other. "By the way," he
added, "I suppose you've heard the news?"

Presley shrank a little. Of late the reports of disasters had
followed so swiftly upon one another that he had begun to tremble
and to quail at every unexpected bit of information.

"What news do you mean?" he asked.

"About Dyke. He has been convicted. The judge sentenced him for
life."

For life! Riding on by the side of this man through the ranches
by the County Road, Presley repeated these words to himself till
the full effect of them burst at last upon him.

Jailed for life! No outlook. No hope for the future. Day after
day, year after year, to tread the rounds of the same gloomy
monotony. He saw the grey stone walls, the iron doors; the
flagging of the "yard" bare of grass or trees--the cell, narrow,
bald, cheerless; the prison garb, the prison fare, and round all
the grim granite of insuperable barriers, shutting out the world,
shutting in the man with outcasts, with the pariah dogs of
society, thieves, murderers, men below the beasts, lost to all
decency, drugged with opium, utter reprobates. To this, Dyke had
been brought, Dyke, than whom no man had been more honest, more
courageous, more jovial. This was the end of him, a prison; this
was his final estate, a criminal.

Presley found an excuse for riding on, leaving S. Behrman behind
him. He did not stop at Caraher's saloon, for the heat of his
rage had long since begun to cool, and dispassionately, he saw
things in their true light. For all the tragedy of his wife's
death, Caraher was none the less an evil influence among the
ranchers, an influence that worked only to the inciting of crime.
Unwilling to venture himself, to risk his own life, the anarchist
saloon-keeper had goaded Dyke and Presley both to murder; a bad
man, a plague spot in the world of the ranchers, poisoning the
farmers' bodies with alcohol and their minds with discontent.

At last, Presley arrived at the ranch house of Los Muertos. The
place was silent; the grass on the lawn was half dead and over a
foot high; the beginnings of weeds showed here and there in the
driveway. He tied his horse to a ring in the trunk of one of the
larger eucalyptus trees and entered the house.

Mrs. Derrick met him in the dining-room. The old look of
uneasiness, almost of terror, had gone from her wide-open brown
eyes. There was in them instead, the expression of one to whom a
contingency, long dreaded, has arrived and passed. The stolidity
of a settled grief, of an irreparable calamity, of a despair from
which there was no escape was in her look, her manner, her voice.
She was listless, apathetic, calm with the calmness of a woman
who knows she can suffer no further.

"We are going away," she told Presley, as the two sat down at
opposite ends of the dining table. "Just Magnus and myself--all
there is left of us. There is very little money left; Magnus can
hardly take care of himself, to say nothing of me. I must look
after him now. We are going to Marysville."

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