Part 5

“Does the dog bite?” Farrell ventured, cautiously.

“Yes,” came sententiously from the hired man.

“We’d better get back to the road,” Farrell said to me, and we could feel amused eyes upon us as we retraced our steps to the track.

Once more Farrell tried his luck; this time at a meagre, wooden, drab cottage that faced a country lane, a hundred yards from the railway. I watched him from the line and noticed that he talked for some time with the woman who answered his knock and stood framed in the door.

When he returned he had two large slices of bread in his hand and some cold meat.

“I didn’t like to take it,” he remarked. “Her husband’s a carpenter and ain’t had no work for six weeks. But she says she couldn’t have me go away hungry. That’s the kind that always helps you, the kind that’s in hard luck themselves, and knows what it is.”

He was for sharing the forage and, hungry as he was, he had not eaten a morsel of it when he rejoined me. That I would take none seemed to him at first a personal slight, but he understood it better when I explained that I had had food at Morris.

There was a cloudless sunset that evening, the sun sinking in a crimson glow that foretold another day of great heat. The stars came slowly out over a firmament of slaty blue, and shone obscurely through the humid air. Farrell and I were silent for some time. Both of us had walked about thirty-six miles that day, and were intent on a resting-place. At last we began to catch the glitter of street-lights in Ottawa, and, at sight of them, Farrell’s spirits rose. He was like one returning home after long absence. The sound of a church-bell came faintly to us. Farrell held me by the arm.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s the Methodist church bell.”

I could see his face light up, as though something were rousing the best that was in him.

At the eastern end of the town, and close to the railway, we came upon a brick-kiln. Farrell was perfectly familiar with his surroundings now, and we stopped for a drink. For some reason the water would not run in the faucet, so we went around to a barn-like building in the rear. Through a large, open doorway he entered, while I remained outside. Soon I heard him in conversation with someone, who proved to be the night-watchman, and, finding that Farrell was not likely to rejoin me soon, I also entered.

Some moments were necessary to accustom one’s eyes to the interior, but I could see at once the figure of a white-bearded old man lying at full length on a bed of gunny-sacks thrown over some sloping boards. His head was propped up, and he held a newspaper which he had been reading by the light of two large torches that hung suspended near him, and from which columns of black smoke rose, curling upward into dark recesses among the rafters. Everything was black with smut and grimy dust. Soon I could see that on one side were great heaps of coal that sloped away to the outer walls like the talus against a cliff.

Farrell was seated on a coal-heap, and was absorbed in the news of the town, as he gathered it from the old man. Quite unnoticed, I sat down on a convenient board and listened dreamily, hoping heartily the while that we should not have to go much further that night.

Presently I found myself alert to what was being said, for they were discussing the question of a night’s lodging. It was from the watchman that the suggestion came that we should remain where we were, and very readily we agreed. Taking a torch from its socket, he lighted us through a long passage to another room that was used as a carpenter’s shop. A carpenter’s bench ran the length of it, and the tools lay strewn over its surface. From a corner he drew a few yards of old matting, which he offered to Farrell as a bed; and he found a door off its hinges, which, when propped up at one end as it lay on the floor, made what proved that night a comfortable bed for me. With a promise to call us early, he left us in the dark, and, quickly off with our boots, we wrapped ourselves in our coats and were soon fast asleep.

The watchman was true to his word; for the stars were still shining when Farrell and I, hungry and stiff, set off down the track in the direction of the railway station. His mood was that of the evening before, as though, after long wandering, he was returning to his native place. Recollections of those ten months of sober industry crowded painfully upon him, and he shrunk like a culprit from possible recognition. Yet every familiar sight held a fascination for him. With kindling interest he pointed out the locality of the boarding-house, and again held me by the arm and made me listen, until I, too, could catch the sound of escaping steam at the tile factory where he had worked.

The iron was entering into his soul, but he knew it only as a painful struggle between a desire to return to a life of work and the inertia that would keep him on the road. We walked on, in silence for the most part, under the morning stars that were dimming at the approach of day. When Farrell spoke, it was to reveal, unconsciously, the progress of the struggle within him.

“It ain’t no use tryin’ for a job; I’ve been lookin’ seven weeks now.” That was the lie to smooth the road to vagabondage.

“I’d have a hell of a time to get square in this town again. Everybody that knowed me, knowed I got fired for drinkin’.” That was the truth that made strait the gate and narrow the way that led to life.

In a moment of encouragement he spoke of the boarding-house keeper and of her promise to take him back again, if he would return to work; but his thoughts of the girl he kept to himself, and deeply I liked him for it.

We were leaving Ottawa behind. With a sharp curve the railway swept around the base of bluffs that rose sheer on our right from the road-bed, rugged and grim in the twilight, the trees on top darkly outlined against the sky. At our left were the flooded lowlands of the Illinois bottom. We could see the decaying cornstalks of last year’s growth just appearing above the water in the submerged fields, and, here and there, a floating out-building which had been carried down by the flood and was caught among the trees.

Was he man enough to hold fast to his chance, or would he allow himself to drift? This was the drama that was unfolding itself there in the dark before the dawn, under frowning banks beside a flooded river, while the silent stars looked down.

We came to another brick-kiln, with its buildings on the bank just above the railway. A light was shining from a shanty window, and a well-worn foot-path led from the road up through the underbrush of the hillside to the shanty door. A night-watchman was making a final round of the kiln to see that all was right before the day’s work began.

Farrell stood still for a moment, the struggle fierce within him.

“Let’s get a drink of water,” he said.

The night-watchman led us to a spring and answered, encouragingly, Farrell’s inquiry about a possible job.

“Go up and ask the boss,” he said. “He’s just finished his breakfast. That’s his house,” he added, pointing to the shanty with the light in the window.