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ABNER'S high sacrifical mood which prompted him to hazard life and limb for Adelaide Jones lasted no longer than the night. He awoke next morning gloomily certain that Adelaide had accepted Buckingham Sharp's proposal of marriage, and he had become indifferent to the threatened strike and the wreck of her fortune.

He sighed heavily, sat up on the side of his bed in the cold autumn morning, yawned, and began pulling on his shoes and trousers. One reason for Abner's lapse from idealism was that he had slept in a small, tightly closed bedroom in order to exclude the unhealthful night air. His chamber was now filled with stale air and the odour of his body.

Another yawn was interrupted by his door creaking open; he covered himself hastily and growled, "Keep out!"

Mrs. Sandage's voice said in her flat country accent, "I'm not comin' in, I'll jest stick in my head," thereupon her head appeared around the edge of the door.

Abner looked at it resentfully. "I'm not dressed," he repeated.

"Well, I'm not comin' in.—Say, what's this I hear about you goin' to work on the railroad ag'in?"

"Who told you that?"

"Aline."

"Well, you tell Aline—No, don't tell her nuthin'. I don't like that nigger nohow."

"Well, I couldn't see no sense in you workin' after you got money. I told Aline they wasn't no sense to it."

"You told her right."

Another brief silence; the head in the doorway gazed past