Chapter 10

Joseph was awakened by brilliant sunshine lying on his eyes and face. Stiff and aching and weary, he moved on the rattan seat where he and Haroun had spent the night in heavy slumber. The younger boy’s head lay on Joseph’s right shoulder as a child’s head lies, his dusky face empty of everything but innocence and pain. His thick curling hair black as coal and as shining, spilled on Joseph’s arm and neck One of his hands had fallen on Joseph’s knee.

The iron wheels of the train rumbled and clattered; the engine howled and pounded. The bright air outside was frequently dulled by smoke and steam. Most of the men in the crowded hot coach still slept, snoring and grunting. Empty bottles rolled and collided over the filthy straw-strewn floor. A rancid wet ceiling, occasionally splashed by sunlight was still lighted by the kerosene lanterns, and appeared to drip The wooden walls of the coach were thick with filth and the accumulations of soot, dirt and smoke, and tobacco stains. The door of the latrine banged persistently and each breath of wind carried the effluvium into the coach. Joseph looked about him with dull and sunken eyes.

Mr Healey slumbered peacefully and noisily on the reversed seat opposite the boys, huge fat legs spread wantonly, bulging waistcoat moving rhythmically, the jeweled trinkets and seals on it winking in the sun, soot-filled white silk cravat loosened fat arms slack against his big though short body polished boots dusty but still shining, fawn pantaloons stretched coat creased. His great rosy face was like an infant’s, and his fat sensual mouth drooled a little and his big gross nostrils expanded and contracted. One large pink ear was crumpled against his bald head. Pale short lashes flickered, and there was a pale stubble on his cheeks and double chin. Porcine, thought Joseph, without malice or disgust but just as a matter of fact. He looked at the short thick fingers with their glittering rings and the jeweled buttons that fastened the fine linen of the fluted shirt at the bulky wrists.

Joseph’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he studied Mr. Healey. His instincts told him that his benefactor was a rascal, but unlike Tom Hennessey’s rascality Mr. Healey’s was open and frank and in a way admirable and a sign of strength. He was a man who would use but probably could not be used. There was a strong shrewdness in him, an alert intelligence, a benign implacability—in short, a man to be feared, a capricious man perhaps, a man who had authority of his own and therefore did not fear authority and could outwit it, and who had little regard for stringent opinions concerning wrong and right. Mr. Healey, it was possible, ran his affairs dangerously close to the cutting edge of the law, and no doubt he had defeated it many a time. Men in this coach had deferred to him, had obeyed him without question, even the deadly quiet men who saw and knew everything, and all of them were scoundrels in their own right. Scoundrels did not respect, obey, and admire probity: Therefore, Mr. Healey did not possess probity.

But conscience, Joseph reflected, and in the words of Sister Elizabeth, “bought no potatoes.” He suddenly felt for his money belt and his concealed twenty-dollar goldpiece. The train was full of sleek robbers. The money was intact. Who would think that a hungry and ragged boy would possess money, anyway? Still, Joseph was relieved. He looked again at Haroun, and frowned. He was still resentful and now even more so that Haroun had attached himself to him, had involved him in dangerous difficulties, had artlessly confided in him and so had made him in a way responsible for his troubles. Haroun now possessed only the shirt and the pantaloons on his body, and only one boot, and the “six bits” in his pocket. It is none of my business, thought Joseph. He must, as the Americans say, take his lumps like anyone else, and his lumps are not mine. As soon as the train reached Titusville he, Joseph, would immediately abandon Haroun. Mr. Healey was another matter. He exuded wealth, competence, authority, and strength. Joseph continued his study.

Musing, he looked at the passing countryside through the evilly stained window. The land was rolling and green here in early summer, and appeared colder and more northern. Cattle walked amiably in the valleys; an occasional gray farmhouse huddled under sparse trees and feathers of early-smoke fluttered from their chimneys. A boy here and there, barefoot, leaned on a rail fence to stare at the noisy train, idly chewing on a slice of bread. There was a dirt road nearby, and a loaded wagon or two ambled along it. Farmers waved; the harness of the horses shone and sparkled in the early sunlight. There was a herd of sheep in the distance. A dog ran barking for a few feet beside the train, then fell back. The sky was polished, cold and blue like steel.

“And what will you be thinking, with that look on your face?” Mr. Healey inquired. Joseph flushed. Apparently Mr. Healey had awakened recently and had studied Joseph in his turn. “Joseph Francis Xavier What?”

“Joe Francis. That is all,” said Joseph. He was vexed. It was all very well for him to reflect and weigh others, but his pride rose at the thought of being so inspected himself. It was an affront, and unpardonable.

Mr. Healey yawned vastly. He appeared amused. He leaned forward to inspect the sleeping Haroun’s foot. It was swathed in kerchiefs no longer immaculately white, and it was badly swollen and appeared red and hot. “Got to do something about your friend,” Mr. Healey remarked.

“He is not my friend,” said Joseph. “I met him on the platform last night, and that is all. And why should you help him?”

“Well,” said Mr. Healey, still examining Haroun’s foot, “what do you think? Out of the goodness of my heart? Brotherly love or something? Touched by a lad so young and his plight? Wanting to help the unfortunate? Kindness of my big soul? Or maybe I can use him? You pays your money and you takes your choice, as the horse-race fellers say. You figure it out, Joe.”

Joseph was increasingly annoyed. It was apparent that Mr. Healey was laughing at him and that was unendurable. He said, “Are you a wildcatter, Mr. Healey?”

Mr. Healey leaned back in his seat, yawned again, produced an enormous cigar and carefully bit off the end and then lit it from a silver box containing lucifers. He contemplated Joseph.

“Well, boyo, you can call me a Grand Panjandrum. Know what that means?”

“Yes,” said Joseph. “It was a burlesque title of an official in a comedy by an English playwright, long ago. It means,” said Joseph with a cold smile, “a pretentious official.”

“Hum,” said Mr. Healey, looking at him in shrewd disfavor. “Educated feller, ain’t you? And where did you acquire this famous education? Yale, maybe, or Harvard, or Oxford in the old country?”

“I read a lot,” said Joseph, and now he stared at Mr. Healey with derisive amusement of his own.

“So I see,” said Mr. Healey. He moved one bloated hip and produced Joseph’s thin leather-bound book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He rubbed one fat finger on the binding, never moving his little black eyes from Joseph’s face. “And you had money to buy a book like this, Joe?”

“Books were given to me by—I don’t know,” said Joseph, and tried to take the book from Mr. Healey. But Mr. Healey deftly put the book behind him.

“You don’t know, eh? Some kind soul, who had pity on a boyo like you, and wanted to help him? But you feel grateful, anyways?”

Joseph said nothing. His small blue eyes glinted in the sun.

“You don’t think anybody does anything out of goodness of heart eh?”

Joseph thought of his father. “Yes, I do,” he said in a loud uninflected voice. “My father did. And that’s why he lies in a pauper’s grave, and my mother lies in the sea.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Healey. “That explains a lot. That happened to my father in Boston, too, where he landed. And my mother, when I was seven. Pauper’s graves for both. Was on my own when I was seven, working in Boston at anything I could turn my hand to. Never regretted it. Nobody owes anybody anything, in this world. Anything good comes it is a blessing out of the blue. Fit for pious thanksgivings. Except you don’t believe in thanksgivings?”

“No.” said Joseph.

“And nobody did nothing for you, all your life?”

Joseph unwillingly thought of the Sisters of Charity on the ship and the old priest, and Sister Elizabeth, and the unknown man who had supplied him with books, and the nuns who had occasionally forced a dinner on him. He also thought of Mrs. Marhall.

“Think it over,” said Mr. Healey, who was watching him closely. “It may be important to you one of these days. Now, I’m not one of them who thinks you should slink around with prayers and talk sweetness and light all the time. It’s a bad world, Joe, and I didn’t make it, and I learned soon not to quarrel with it. For every good and charitable man there’s a thousand or more who’d steal your heart’s blood if they could sell it for a profit. And ten thousand would sell your coat to the pawnbroker for two bits, even if they didn’t need the money. I know all about this world, boyo, more than you do. Eat or be eaten. Your money or your life. Thieves and murderers and traitors and liars and grafters. All men are Judas, more or less.”

Joseph had listened intently. Mr. Healey waved the cigar and continued in his resounding and suetty voice.

“Just the same,” he said, “you sometimes find a good man, and like the Bible or something says, he’s worth more than rubies, if he ain’t a fool who is feckless and thriftless and believes in a wonderful tomorrow that never comes. A good man with a head on his shoulders is worth something, and that I know. Could be all the good people you met were fools?”

“Yes,” said Joseph.

“Too bad,” said Mr. Healey. “Maybe they wasn’t though. Maybe you just thought they was. That’s something for you to ponder on, when you have the time. You never had much time to ponder on anything though, I’m thinking.”

“True,” said Joseph.

“Too busy,” said Mr. Healey, nodding his head. “I like men who are busy. Too easy to lie down in the gutter and beg. Find lots of them in the cities. Well, anyways, it was bad for the Irish in Boston, so I worked my way down to old Kentuck and that’s where I grew up, Louisville and Lexington, and such. And the river boats.” He winked amicably at Joseph.

“A gambler?” said Joseph.

“Well, say a gentleman of fortune. A Grand Panjandrum. I always thought it meant a man of affairs, but then I’m not educated like you though I know my letters. Some.”

He looked at his gold watch, then clicked it shut. “Soon be in Titusville. Say I give Grand Panjandrum a new meaning: A man with lots of affairs. Finger in every pie. Politics. Oil. River boats. Retailer. Name it. I’m it. Never turn down an honest penny and maybe never turn down a dishonest one, either. And another thing: Find out the skeleton in every man’s closet or his favorite vice or weakness, and you’ve got him in your hand,” and Mr. Healey’s fat fingers closed quickly in the hand he suddenly held aloft. “Do him favors, but make him pay for them one way or another. Best way to get rich, though, is politics.” The gesture of the ringed hand was both cruel and rapacious.

“So you are a politician, too?”

“No, sir. Too dirty for me. But I control politicians, and that’s better.”

Joseph was becoming extremely interested in spite of his aloofness. “Do you know Senator Hennessey?”

“Ole Tom?” Mr. Healey laughed richly. “I made Ole Tom! Knew half a dozen of the Pennsylvania Legislature. Been living in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia last twenty years or so. Worked like hell to stop that yokel, Abe Lincoln, but it didn’t turn out. Anyways, all for the best. We’re in a war now, and there’s always a lot of money to be made out of wars. Know them all. Did a lot of business in wars in Mexico and other places. People say they hate wars, but governments never made a war and nobody came. That’s human nature. And when we win this war, there’s going to be lots of good fat pickings in the South, too. That, boyo, is what the war’s about, though you hear a lot of drivel about slavery and the Rights of Man. Et cetera. Lot of dung. It’s money, that’s all. South too prosperous. North in an industrial panic. Simple as that.”

“I’m not interested in wars,” said Joseph.

“Now that,” said Mr. Healey, “is one Goddamned stupid remark. If you want to make your mark, boyo, you’ve got to be interested in every last Goddamn thing the world does, and see where it will turn a profit for you if you’re smart. You got to learn a lot, Joseph Francis Xavier.”

“And you intend to teach me?” said Joseph, with contempt.

Mr. Healey studied him and his eyes narrowed so much that they almost disappeared. “If I do, son, it’ll be the luckiest day of your life, sure and it will. You think you’re tough and ornery. You ain’t. Not yet you ain’t. Tough and ornery folks don’t appear to be. It’s the soft ones who put on the front of toughness and hardness, to sort of protect themselves from the real murderers, who are all sweet talk and kind smiles and helpfulness. It don’t do them no good, though. The tough fellers can see right through all that shell to the tasty oyster inside.”

“And you think I’m a tasty oyster?”

Mr. Healey burst out laughing. He pointed his cigar at Joseph, and he laughed so heartily that tears filled his little eyes and spilled out onto his fat full cheeks. He shook his head over and over in uncontrolled mirth. Joseph watched him with mortified and furious anger.

“Son,” gasped Mr. Healey, “you ain’t even a morsel of shrimp!” He pulled out another scented and folded kerchief from his hip pocket and wiped his eyes and moaned with delight. “Oh, my God, oh, my God!” he groaned with rich feeling and pleasure. “You’re killing me, son.”

He looked at Joseph and tried to control himself. His whole body quaked with joyous laughter, and he belched and gulped. Then he pointed the cigar at Joseph again.

“Son,” he, said in a strangled voice, “I’m interested in you because you got the makings of a scoundrel. Besides, you’re an Irisher, and I always had a soft spot for an Irisher, feckless or not. You can do something with the Irish. And you can depend on their loyalty, too, if they like you. If they don’t, you’re a dead man. Now, look here, you helped this boy, though he’s no kin or friend of yours. Maybe saved his life. I’m not asking for an explanation, because you can’t explain it. But I liked that in you, though I don’t say I admired it. What is he, anyways, a Turk?”

Joseph, in his silent rage, could not speak for a moment. “No,” he said at last, in a voice full of hate for Mr. Healey, “he’s a Lebanese. I told you he was a Christian, if that means anything. Do you know,” said Joseph with unusual malice, “what a Lebanese is?”

But Mr. Healey was not humiliated or annoyed. “No, boyo, I don’t. Don’t even want to know. Never heard of anyone like that, though, come to think of it. He looks like life dealed him a dirty hand, too. Know anything about that?”

“A little,” said Joseph.

“Bad as your own, eh?”

“Perhaps.”

“But he don’t look sour like you, boyo, and maybe there’s something in that for me, too. Would you say he was soft?”

“Perhaps. He supported an old grandmother on two dollars a week, working in a stable.”

“And you never supported anybody, and you a grown man seventeen, eighteen?”

Joseph said nothing.

“Heard that men seventeen and eighteen, married, and with kids, opening up the West,” said Mr. Healey. “Covered wagons and all. Wilderness. They got guts. Think you got guts, Joseph Francis Xavier?”

Joseph said, “I’ll do anything.”

Mr. Healey nodded. “That’s the password, boyo. That’s the password of the men who survive. If you’d said anything else I’d not have bothered with you any longer. Think you’d like to join up with me?”

“Depends on the pay, Mr. Healey.”

Mr. Healey nodded again with great approval. “That’s what I like to hear. If you’d said that it depends on anything else I wouldn’t waste my time on you. Money: that’s the ticket. Looks like your Turk is waking up. What you say his name is, his moniker? Haroun Zieff? Heathen name. From now on he’s—let me see. Harry Zeff. That’s what we’ll call him. Sounds more American. German. Lots of Germans in Pennsylvania. Good stuff in them. Know how to work, they do, and how to turn a profit, and never heard them whining, either. If there’s anything I hate it’s a whiner. What’s your Turk trying to say to you?”

The men in the coach were awakening, too, groaning, cursing grunting, complaining. A long line of them formed for the latrine at the end of the coach, as they fingered their buttons impatiently. They exuded the old stink of sweat, tobacco smoke and stale perfume and wool. Some of them, pressed more than others, frankly exposed themselves in readiness and roared for loiterers to hurry. The prudishness which lived darkly in the nature of Joseph was affronted at this brutish display, and he turned reluctantly to Haroun who had begun to whimper with pain though his eyes still remained shut. The men jostled in the aisle, swaying with the sway of the slowing train, and some of them obsequiously nodded and grinned at Mr. Healey and some looked with indifference at the two youths opposite him as if they were no more than a pair of trussed chickens. Their immediate interest was their needs, and their importunities became increasingly obscene. The raw sunlight showed their swollen and gross and rapacious faces, and when they spoke or laughed the light glinted from large white teeth which resembled, to Joseph, the teeth of predatory beasts.

“Hang it out the window!” bawled Mr. Healey in his genial fashion.

This evoked fawning laughter and admiring comments on his wit. Mr. Healey spoke in a just perceptible brogue, and his mixture of Southern and Irish usage apparently charmed those who hoped to make a profit from or with him in Titusville. “You got a dirty mouth on you, Ed,” said one man leaning over to slap Mr. Healey on his thick shoulder. “See you tomorrow?”

“With cash,” said Mr. Healey. “Don’t do business ’cept it’s cash.”

He looked at Joseph with a contented and important expression but Joseph was distastefully examining Haroun. Haroun’s dark face was deeply flushed and very hot. His forehead gleamed with sweat and tendrils of his black hair clung to it as if stuck by syrup. His tremulous mouth moved and he spoke but Joseph could not understand his imploring words and now his whole body moved restlessly with pain and distress, and sometimes he groaned. His toes had purpled and extruded through the kerchiefs which swathed them. Mr. Healey looked at him with interest, leaning forward.

“Now Joseph Francis Xavier What,” he said, “what do you propose we do with this boyeen—who’s no concern of ours, eh? No friend of yours. Never saw him before, myself. Leave him on the train for the conductor to dispose of like rubbage?”

Joseph felt a rush of the deep cold fury he always felt when anyone intruded upon him. He looked at Haroun and hated the boy for his present predicament. Then he said with anger, “I have a ten-dollar goldpiece. I’ll give it to the trainman to help him. That’s all I can do.” He had a sick sensation of helplessness and wild impatience.

“You got ten-dollar goldpieces? My, that’s surprising,” said Mr. Healey. “Thought you was a beggar, myself. So, you’ll give a piece to the trainman, and you’ll get off this here ole train and forget your little Turk ever lived. Know what I heard once from a Chinaman working on the railroad? If you save a man’s life you got to take care of him the rest of your life. That’s for tinkering with the fates, or something. Well, the trainman takes that nice yeller piece of yours, and what’s he supposed to do then? Take the little Turk home with him in Titusville and dump him into his wife’s bed? Know what I think? The trainman will take your money and just let the spalpeen die here, right in this coach, peaceful or not. It don’t run back to Wheatfield for six whole days. Nobody’s going to look in this coach until Saturday.”

Despairing, Joseph shook Haroun, but it was evident that the boy was unconscious. He kept up a steady moaning and muttering in delirium. He lay flaccid against Joseph’s greatcoat except when he struggled in his suffering. Joseph cried, “I don’t know what to do!”

“But you are real mad that you have to do anything, is that it? Don’t blame you. I feel the same about people don’t belong to me. We’re coming into Titusville. Get that box of yours from under the seat. We’ll just leave the Turk here. No use even to use that goldpiece. Lad looks like he’s done for, anyways.”

But Joseph did not move. He looked up at Mr. Healey and his young face was gaunt and drawn and very white, and the dark freckles stood out on his nose and cheeks. His eyes were blue and enraged fire.

“I don’t know anyone in Titusville,” he said. “Maybe you know somebody who’d take him in and care for him until he’s better. I can give them the money.”

“Son,” said Mr. Healey, standing up, “you don’t know Titusville. It’s like a jungle, it is that. I seen many a man, young as this and you, dying on the streets from cholera or ague or something, and nobody cared. Black gold fever: That’s what got this town. And when men are after gold, the devil take the hindmost, specially the sick and the weak. Everybody’s too busy filling his pockets and robbing his neighbor. There ain’t an inn or hotel in Titusville that ain’t crowded to the doors, and no new-fangled hospital, if that’s what you’re thinking about. You take people who are living peaceful in town or country, and they’ll help a stranger—sometimes—out of Christian charity, but you take a madhouse like Titusville, a stranger is just a dog unless he’s got two good hands and a good back to work with, or a stake. Now, if your Turk was a girl I’d know just the place who’d take him in. Own four or five, myself,” and Mr. Healey chuckled. He pulled up his pantaloons and chuckled again. The train was moving very slowly now and the men in the coach were gathering up their bags and talking and laughing with the exuberance only the thought of money can induce. The coach was hurtfully glaring with sunlight but the wind that invaded the coach was very cool.

Joseph closed his eyes and bit his lip so hard that it turned white. Haroun’s restless hands were moving over him, as hot as coals.

“Well, Joe, here we are, depot riding right in. Coming?”

Joseph said, “I can’t leave him. I’ll find a way.”

He hated and detested himself. It would take very little, he thought, just to lift his box and walk from this coach and never look back. What was Haroun Zieff to him? But though he actually reached for his box his hand fell from it, and despair swept him like the intensity of physical illness. He thought of Sean and Regina. What if they were abandoned like this, in the event that he, Joseph, was no longer able to protect them? Would any Mr. Healey or even a Joseph Armagh come to their aid and save them?

“I’ll find a way,” said Joseph to the standing man near him. He saw only the big belly in its silk brocaded waistcoat and the jeweled trinkets of the gold watch chain which sparkled in the sunlight, and he smelled the odor of the man, fat and rich and sleek.

“Now,” said Mr. Healey. “That’s what I like to hear a man say: ‘I’ll find a way.’ None of that, ‘For the love of dear Jaysus, sir, help me, ’cause I’m too damned lazy and stupid and no-account to do it meself. I appeal to your Christian charity, sir.’ Any man says that to me,” said Mr. Healey with real pent emotion, “I say to him, ‘Get off your ass and help yourself as I did and millions afore you, damn you.’ Wouldn’t trust a psalm-singer or a beggar with a two-cent piece, no sir. They’d eat you alive, come they had the chance.”

The train had halted at a dismal makeshift depot and the men were running from it with shouts to acquaintances and friends they had seen from the windows.

Mr. Healey waited. But Joseph had not been listening closely. He saw that Haroun had begun to shiver and that his child’s face had suddenly turned gray. He tugged off his old greatcoat and clumsily wrapped Haroun in it. A trainman was coming down the aisle with a basket, in which he was depositing the empty bottles on the floor. Joseph called to him. “Hey, there, I need a hand with my sick friend! I’ve got to find a place for him to stay. Know of any?”

The trainman stood up straight and scowled. Mr. Healey uttered an astonished grunt. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Joe?” he demanded. “Ain’t I here? Too proud to ask, eh, and me your old friend, Ed Healey!”

The trainman recognized Mr. Healey, and came forward, bowing his head and tugging at his cap. He looked at the two boys. “Friends of yours, sir?” he asked in a groveling whine. He looked more closely, and was astonished at the sight of the two ragged youths, one of whom was obviously almost moribund.

“Bet your life they are, Jim,” said Mr. Healey. “My carryall out there with my shiftless Bill?”

“Sure is, Mr. Healey, I’ll run get him and he can help you with—with your friends,” he added in a weak voice. “Give you a hand too. Glad to do it, sir. Anythin’ for Mr. Healey, anythin’!” He looked again at Joseph and Haroun and blinked incredulously.

“Capital,” said Mr. Healey, and shook hands with the trainman and the dazed Joseph saw the gleam of silver before it disappeared. The trainman ran like a boy off the train, shouting to someone and calling.

“Nothing like good silver, as every Judas knows,” said Mr. Healey, chuckling. He picked up his tall silk hat and set it like a shimmering chimney over his enormous rosy face.

“Whatever you do,” said Joseph, finding his voice and using it with hard and sullen pride, “I’ll pay you for it.”

“That you will, boyo, that you will,” said Mr. Healey. “Eh, here’s my Bill.” He said to Joseph, “I ain’t a man for sweet talk, but I’ll tell you this, Irish: A man who don’t desert his friend is the man for me. Can trust him. Would trust him with my life.” Joseph looked at him with the calm and enigmatic expression he had had to cultivate for many years and behind which he lived as if in ambush. Mr. Healey, seeing this, narrowed his little dark eyes and hummed under his breath, thoughtfully. He thought that there were a few men still in the world who were hard to fool, and Joseph was one of them. Mr. Healey was not vexed. He was amused. Never trust a simpleton, was one of his mottoes. He can ruin you, the simpleton, more devastatingly with his virtue than any thief with his thieving.

The air was chill and bright outside the train, and the new rough depot platform milled with excited men carrying their wicker luggage and portmanteaus. Carryalls, surreys, carts, wagons, buggies, and a handsome carriage or two, horses and mules, awaited them, and a number of buxom women dressed gaudily and wrapped in beautiful shawls, their bonnets gay with flowers and ribbons and silk and velvet, their skirts elaborately hooped and embroidered. Everything dinned with ebullience and loud fast voices. If there was any thought of the fratricidal war gathering force in the country there was no sign of it here, no sober voice, no fearful word. A golden dust shimmered everywhere in the sunlight, adding a carnival aura to the scene. It was as if the insensate length of the train, itself, was quivering with excitement also, for it snorted, steam shrilly screamed, bells rang wildly. Everyone was in constant motion; there were no leisurely groups or easy attitudes. The scent of dust, smoke, warmed wood, hot iron, and coal was pervaded by an acrid odor Joseph had never encountered before, but which he was to learn was the odor of raw black oil. Just perceptible to the ear was a dull and steady pounding of machinery at a distance.

Titusville, set among circling hills and valleys the color and gleaming texture of emerald velvet, was hardly a frontier town, though the normal and settled population was just in excess of one thousand, more or less. It was about forty miles from Lake Erie, and had been prosperous even before oil, being noted for its lumber production and its sawmills and its busy flatboats carrying wood down Oil Creek for distant parts. The farmers were prosperous also, for the land was rich and fertile, and life, to the people of the pretty village, had always been good and never arduous. They were of industrious Scots-Irish stock, with a few Germans equally sound and sober.

But the newcomers from nearby states, and the oil frenzy, gave it the air of an exploding frontier town of the West, in spite of noble old mansions scattered at intervals throughout the town behind great oaks and elms and smooth lawns, and proud old families who pretended not to notice the raw newcomers and their frantic ways and their bawling voices. They also pretended to be immune to the new commerce on Oil Creek. They affected to be unaware of a recently unemployed trainman known jocularly as “Colonel” Edwin L. Drake, who had drilled the first artesian well in Titusville two years before. (They had heard, however, that he was keeping the Standard Oil Company at bay, and John D. Rockefeller, reputedly a nobody and a vulgarian and gross entrepreneur who thought of nothing but profit and exploitation, and recklessly destroyed beautiful countrysides in his delirious and insatiable search for wealth.) No one spoke of the new ten saloons and eight brothels in the town, two “op’ry houses,” four inns, and one fairly new hotel. If these seemed unduly busy no one seemed to notice. These were for “outsiders,” and did not exist for ladies and gentlemen who had vowed to keep Titusville Pure and Untrammeled, safe for Christian Families.

There were six churches, filled at the two services every Sunday, and for Wednesday “meetings,” and the many socials. The village, even with its new banks founded by “outsiders,” was only the periphery of the churches, which dominated social life and its affairs. The cleavage between the “old residents” and the “outsiders” was apparently impassable, and both apparently ignored the other, to the “outsiders” knowing winks and bawdy hilarity.

“Ain’t nothing funnier than a big-mouth Christian,” Mr. Healey would often remark. “And more murderous and greedy, neither. Just quote the Bible at them and you can get away with anything you got a mind to.” Mr. Healey, during business sessions with the natives of Titusville, always quoted the Bible, though nobody could ever discover the text he had quoted so sonorously and with such evident reverence. He rarely, however, quoted the Bible to business associates, who were busy with the same deceit as himself.

It sometimes annoyed Mr. Healey that after he had wasted time quoting the Bible at some apparently docile and gentlemanly native of Titusville and had invented sections which had won his own admiration for their eloquence and wisdom, the natives had gone out to gather up options in the countryside for themselves, “and their mouths looking just like they’d just drunk milk and eaten fresh bread,” he would recall bitterly. “It just makes you remember,” he would add, “that not every man who chews a straw is a greenhorn, and there’s many a woman you think is a lady who can outsmart you and leave your pockets empty.”

Mr. Healey’s “Bill” was a William Strickland from the stark hills of Appalachia, a Kentuckian. Joseph had never seen a man so tall and so excessively thin and lank. He was like a skeleton tree, narrow and fleshless and without juice. He had a face like the head of an ax, and hardly wider, and a shock of black hair stiff and lifeless like the quills of a porcupine, and as erect. His eyes, though not intelligent, were brilliantly intent and hazel, the eyes of an avid and predatory beast. His shoulders, including his neck, were no more than sixteen inches broad, and his hips appeared even more meager. But he had gigantic hands, the hands of a strangler, and feet resembling long slabs of wood crudely fashioned. His skin was withered and deeply lined, and he possessed few teeth and those like fangs and stained with tobacco juice. He could have been aged from thirty to fifty. His impression on Joseph was of a creature of witless ferocity.

But Bill was strong. A word from Mr. Healey and he lifted the delirious Haroun in his arms without strain and carried him from the depot. He smelled of dirt and rancid sow belly. His voice was soft and subservient to Mr. Healey, and never questioning. He wore a filthy dark blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up over brown tendons and elongated muscles, and blackish overalls, and nothing else. His feet were bare. A thin stream of tobacco saliva dribbled from a corner of his mouth. He had glanced once at Joseph and that glance was as opaque as wood, and as interested. He showed no wonder at the sight of Haroun. Apparently what Mr. Healey ordained was sufficient for him, however strange or foreign, and Joseph thought, He would kill on command. When he found out later that Bill had indeed killed he was not surprised.

Everyone appeared to know Mr. Healey’s fine carryall with its fringed top, for there was an empty circle about it. Not looking to right or left Bill carried Haroun to the vehicle, which was drawn by two fine gray mares with silken tails and manes. He laid the boy along one side and tucked Joseph’s coat about him, then climbed down and awaited his employer, looking for him with half-wild and doglike eyes. Mr. Healey was a procession in himself, accepting greetings affably, bowing and doffing his hat to the ladies, smiling and joking-and smoking one of his endless rich cigars. Joseph walked at his side and attracted no more attention than if he had been invisible. In the presence of the gorgeous Mr. Healey all other human beings, and particularly a shabby and ragged youth, disappeared.

Bill tenderly helped Mr. Healey into the carryall, then seemed startled when Joseph followed as if the youth had not been encountered before. Then he climbed to his seat, struck the mare with his whip and the ironshod wheels rolled off smartly.

Seeing that Haroun rocked on the long opposite seat and was in danger of rolling off, Joseph braced the boy’s middle with his boots. Haroun never ceased his feverish moaning, and Joseph watched him with an inscrutable expression.

“He’ll live, strong and healthy, and if he don’t there’s no loss,” remarked Mr. Healey. “Look about you, Irish, you’re in Titusville now and ain’t that where you want to be? We brought some life to this hick town, and you’d think they’d be grateful, wouldn’t you?”

Joseph thought that Winfield had been barren and repulsive enough, but he saw that what the “outsiders” had made of a once lovely and charming village was nothing short of desecration—in the name of progress and money. An apparently new and raw community had grown up swiftly in the vicinity of the depot, and the cold northern sun glared without the softening effects of trees and grass on wooden walks. The carriage rolled over broken slabs of stone and long dusty planks laid roughly and in a haphazard fashion on bare packed earth. Cheap houses, still unpainted, fashioned of crude siding or logs, huddled sheepishly between noxious saloons and tawdry shops. Small copses of trees had been chopped down to make plots of grassless clay, waiting for new and ugly buildings, a number of them in various stages of construction, and being built without regard for gracious space, inviting vistas or even regularity. Some had already been finished and Mr. Healey pointed to them and said, “Our new op’ry houses. Lively every night ’til early morning. Liveliest places in town, ’cept for the whorehouses, which does a good business all the time. Saloons never empty, neither. Even Sundays,” and he chuckled fatly. “We put this town on the railroad, that we did.”

The “outsiders,” who had come to ravish and exploit and not to create homes and churches and flowered lawns, had only alleys and bare ground and broken barrels where there should have been gardens. Swarms of dirty children played on the walks and on the streets. “Work here for everybody, even the town folk,” said Mr. Healey, with pride. “You should have seen it when I first come. Like a graveyard; no life. Nothing.”

Joseph looked up at the green hills, steep or sloping, which surrounded the village, and he thought of the beautiful hills of Ireland, which were no greener nor more inviting. Would they soon be destroyed also, and left desolate and denuded of all that soft serenity? Joseph considered what greedy men can do to the holy earth and the splendor of the world, and to the innocent creatures who inhabited it harmlessly and had their simple being apart from men. Man, he reflected, destroys everything and leaves a wasteland behind him, and congratulates himself that he has improved the earth instead of raping and scarring it. In his hand lay the ax of death and desolation. The desert which was the mind of man made a desert beyond that mind, fruitless and evil, filled with burning stone and vultures. Joseph was not accustomed to mourning the wickedness of his fellows, for he was inured to it, but he felt a surly rage against what he saw now and what he suspected had already been done in other communities. Forests, hills, mountains, rivers, and green streams had no protection in the face of rapacity. Was it possible that most men were blind and did not realize what they were doing to the only home they could ever know, and the only peace available to them?

He said to Mr. Healey, “Do you live here, sir?”

“Me? Hell, no. Got a house here where I stay in town, bought it cheap from some high-and-mighty snot-nose never worked a day in his life and went bankrupt. Hard to believe in this here territory where there’s so much lumber, and salt mines and good land, but he managed, that he did. Feckless. That was before the oil come in. I live in Philadelphia and sometimes Pittsburgh, where I got a lot of interests, too.”

Joseph reflected that Mr. Healey told as little about his affairs as did he, Joseph, and he smiled sourly to himself.

“Now here’s the square, as they call it, and the City Hall, and the best stores and the law fellers’ offices, and the doctors,” said Mr. Healey as the carryall entered the square. It was apparent that once this small section of land had been as entrancing and gently lovely as any other spot in the vicinity, for trees still stood on it in cool dark clusters, their leaves glittering in the sunlight, and there were gravel paths winding through dead earth which formerly had been green and soft. There was a broken fountain in the center, and a stone plinth with carved words on it, and nothing else except clay and weeds. The square was surrounded by buildings which still hinted of grace before the “outsiders” had come, ravening here, of fieldstone, and the windows were still bravely polished, but there was a sad look about them as if they were shrinking.

The square was full of traffic, high bicycles, buggies, carryalls, hacks, surreys, and even a few handsome carriages of shining black lacquer with gorgeously painted scenes on their sides and drawn by lively horses in silver harness. People moved rapidly on the bald walks. The wind was strong, and it lifted the women’s shawls and tossed their wide skirts and showed yards of ruffled petticoats, and bonnet ribbons streamed from bent heads. Men held their hats. Here the atmosphere was harsh with voices, the rattle of iron-shod wheels, the rumble of loaded wagons, and it smelled highly of manure. Doors swung open and banged vehemently. Everything was much louder than in drab and staid Winfield, where vice and avarice lived quietly. Joseph suspected that here they lived noisily and with gusto and he wondered if that were not an improvement. At least there was something rawly innocent about open vileness. The air of festival and anticipation was almost palpable here, and all faces reflected polished greed and lively busyness, even the faces of young girls. Everyone seemed to skip, as if about to break into an eager and laughing run, full of excitement and hurry. Voices, greeting others, were quick and breathless, and men raced off replacing lifted hats.

The carryall moved briskly towards the opposite end of the square and suddenly Joseph, half-disbelieving, caught the scent of grass and fresh trees and roses and honeysuckle. The carryall swung down the far street and at once everything changed abruptly. Pretty small houses and lawns and gardens and tall elms and oaks appeared as if one walked from a prison yard into comparative and blooming heaven. The cobbled street began to broaden, as if smiling as it revealed treasures, and the houses became bigger and taller, the lawns wider, the trees higher and more profuse and the gardens luxurious. This area was not Green Hills in the least, but to Joseph it was a refreshment to the eye and a green touch on the spirit.

“Pretty, ain’t it?” said Mr. Healey, who noticed everything. “Old families. Own lots of farmland, good rich lumber farms, and fields where we’re drilling. Been here before the Revolution, and sometimes I think none of them ever died but just live on like mummies or something, or what is that thing that turns to stone?”

“Petrified wood,” said Joseph.

“You’re right smart, ain’t you?” said Mr. Healey, with a little friendly rancor. “Never held it against a man, though. What else do you know besides everything, Joe?”

“I’ve read a lot most of my life,” said Joseph. “And I write a fine hand.”

“Is that so? Need an honest man to keep my books. Maybe you’ll do.”

“No,” said Joseph. “I’m not going to be a clerk in some dark office. I am going to drive one of the wagons to the oil fields. I hear the wages are very good.”

“You want to blow all those brains of yours to kingdom come, eh?”

Joseph shrugged. “Better that than live the way I have been living, Mr. Healey. I need a great deal of money. I want to make my fortune. The little life is not for me. That is why I came to Titusville. As I told you before, I’ll do anything—for money.”

Mr. Healey squinted at him. “It’s that way, eh?”

“Yes,” said Joseph.

“Reckon I can use you,” said Mr. Healey. “I’ll think on it. But don’t despise ledgers. You can learn a lot that way.”

He thought a moment or two, as he clung, swaying, to the straps of the vehicle. Then he said with a positive air, “The law for you, boyo. That’s the ticket.”

“Law?” said Joseph, his small blue eyes widening in incredulity.

“Why not? Legal plunder, that’s what it is. Don’t dirty your hands, and gold sticks to ’em. Other people’s gold.” His body shook with his fruity laughter. “It ain’t necessary to be a lawyer to go into politics, but it helps. Don’t look at me as if I’m demented, boyo. I know what I’m talking about. We’ll put you to study law with some fine thief of a lawyer, and your fortune’s made.” He slapped his fat thighs happily. “I need a private lawyer, that I do.

“Of course,” said Mr. Healey, “that ain’t tomorrow. In the meantime, we can make a good thing together, you working for me.”

“At what?”

“My interests,” said Mr. Healey. “Collecting, managing, and such. Had a feller up to a month ago and he stole me blind. Almost. Got sent up for twenty years and he was almost hanged.” He looked at Joseph intently. “In places like this, they ain’t soft on thieves—except legal ones. Ever stole anything, Joe?”

Joseph immediately thought of Mr. Squibbs. He said, “I borrowed some money—once. At six percent interest.”

“All cleared up now?” He winked knowingly. But Joseph remained without expression.

“No. And that is why I’ve got to make a lot of money, soon.”

“Why’d you borrow the money?”

Joseph considered him. “Mr. Healey,” he said at last, “that is my own affair. I’ve not questioned you about your affairs.”

“Sassy tongue on you, don’t you?” said Mr. Healey. “Well, I like a man with spirit. Knew you had guts minute I saw you. Hate snivelers. Would you say you was an honest man, Joe?”

Joseph smiled his cold and ironic smile. “If it is to my interest, yes.”

Mr. Healey laughed. “Knew you was a born lawyer! Well, here we are.”

It was a ponderous three-story house, baronial, in Joseph’s first appraisal, of rose brick and white stone, tall if narrow, with pedimented windows and white shutters, and a wide porte cochere of brick and snowy pillars. It did not have the smooth grandeur of Tom Hennessey’s house in warm Green Hills, but it had a hard and compact strength, and lace curtains and velvet hung against polished glass and the doors were double and white and high. It stood like a wall, a sentinel, somewhat forbidding, beyond a rolling lawn, and a winding gravel driveway moved towards it past a clump of stiff green poplars, sentinels themselves. No flower beds softened the hard light on the grass. Joseph could glimpse a glass conservatory in the rear, and a number of outbuildings including a stable. The house spoke of age and solidity and money.

“Nice, ain’t it?” said Mr. Healey as the carryall rolled towards the porte cochere. “It does me well when I’m here. Got it for a song.”

The carryall passed under the roof of the porte cochere and the door flew open and on the threshold stood a young lady of uncommon beauty and obvious vivacity. Joseph’s mouth opened in surprise. Mr. Healey’s daughter? She was no more than twenty, if even of those years, and had a lovely figure which her rich gown of wine-red merino draped over enormous hoops could not entirely hide. There were deep cascades of weblike lace about her throat and wrists, and the throat and wrists were remarkable for their whiteness and delicacy, and were jeweled. Her pointed face glowed and dimpled, and her cheeks were the color of apricots and so were her beautiful lips which had parted in a smile of great delight, showing her square white teeth. Her nose was impertinent, her eyes extraordinarily large and shiningly brown, with shadowy long lashes. Glossy ringlets of brown hair tumbled to her shoulders. She had a look of intense life and gusto, and she stood on the middle step of a white flight of four, laughingly holding out her arms and regarding Mr. Healey with radiant glee. He climbed from the carryall and bowed and lifted his hat, and shouted, “Miss Emmy! God bless you, my child!”

Joseph had not been prepared for such a house nor for such a girl, and he stood dumbly beside Mr. Healey, conscious as never before of his shabby state and dirty boots and soiled shirt and scarf, and hatless head, his cardboard box under his arm. The girl looked at him with open surprise, at his shaggy mass of russet hair tumbled and uncombed, at his pale and freckled face, at his general air of indigence. Then she ran down the rest of the stairs and flung herself, laughing and trilling, into Mr. Healey’s arms. He kissed and embraced her with enthusiasm, then smacked her on the backside with pleasure.

“Miss Emmy,” he said, “this here is Joe. My new friend, Joe, who’s thrown in his lot with me. Look at him, now: Gawking like a chicken with the roup. Never saw such a pretty sight as you, Miss Emmy, as he sees how, and his mouth’s awatering.”

“Pish!” exclaimed Miss Emmy, in the prettiest voice, like that of a happy child. “I swear, sir, that you make me blush!” She dropped a light little curtsey, full of demureness, in Joseph’s general direction, and he bowed his head stiffly, full of silent bewilderment.

“Joe,” said Mr. Healey, “this here is Miss Emmy. Miss Emmy, love, I don’t rightly know his name, but he calls himself Joe Francis, and he’s got a close mouth and so we make the best of it.”

Sunlight flashed on the glossiness of Miss Emmy’s ringlets and on the side of her bright cheek and now she looked at Joseph with more interest, seeing, as Mr. Healey had already seen, the latent young virility of him and the capacity for violence about his eyes and wide thin mouth. “Mr. Francis,” she murmured.

Bill appeared with the unconscious Haroun in his arms, Joseph’s greatcoat swathing the slight body. Miss Emmy was astounded. She looked to Mr. Healey for enlightenment. “Just a young spalpeen, penniless beggar from the train,” he explained. “Joe here’s friend. Think we got a bed for him, and a bed for Joe?”

“Why, Mr. Healey, sir, it is your house and there is room for all—for all your friends,” said the girl. But her fair brow puckered in bafflement. “I will tell Miz Murray.” She swung about, hoops and ringlets and lace swaying, and ran up the stairs and into the house, as blithely as a kitten. Mr. Healey watched her go, fondly, his face suffused and contented, and he went up the steps motioning for Joseph and Bill to follow.

“Bought Miss Emmy from a whorehouse when she was fifteen, three years ago,” said Mr. Healey over his shoulder, and without the slightest embarrassment. “Come from Covington, Kentuck, raw as an egg. Cost me three hundred dollars, but cheap enough for a piece like that, wouldn’t you say, Joe?”

Joseph was not entirely unfamiliar with the traffic in white flesh, though he had only heard of it in Winfield from the snickering men at the sawmill and knew of the discreet houses which harbored unfortunate girls. He stopped on the steps. “You bought her, Mr. Healey? I thought only blacks could be bought.”

Mr. Healey had reached the door. He looked down at Joseph with impatience. “That’s what the madam said she was worth, but more, and I own the whorehouse and Miss Emmy drew a lot of money and she was young, and the madam had cleaned her up and dressed her and taught her manners like a lady, and so she was worth the money. Not that I own her like you mean, boyo, like a nigger, but I own her, by God I do! And God help the man who looks at her now and licks his lips!”

Joseph had not read many pious books recommended by the Church, and only when he had been bereft of other books, and it had been his conviction that “women of shame” were drabs, and tortured with remorse and despair and showed the marks of evil and degradation on depraved countenances. But Miss Emmy was as fresh as the blue wild flowers along the roads in Pennsylvania, and as fair and gay as spring, and if she felt “remorse” or bewailed her condition it certainly had not been evident in that brief encounter of a few moments ago. Happiness and exuberance had sparkled visibly from her, and she had left a trail of haunting and expensive scent in her passage. He felt like an uncouth and ignorant bumpkin when he entered the long and narrow hall behind the white doors. He looked about him with increasing uneasiness and confusion.

The hall was dim after the glare of sunlight outside, but after a moment Joseph could see that the tall walls were covered with red silk damask—he had read of such in romantic novels—and were profusely covered with landscapes, seascapes and classical subjects, very decorous, in heavy gilt frames. The walls were also lined with handsome sofas and chairs in blue and green and red velvet, and the floor under Joseph’s feet was soft and he saw the Persian rug in many different hues and of a tortuous pattern. At the end of the hall an overpowering staircase of mahogany rose and turned upwards in the direction of the second and third stories. Joseph could smell beeswax and old potpourri and cinnamon and cloves, and something else which he could not as yet define but which he later learned was gas from the oil wells of Titusville. Behind him waited, in that sinister and patient silence of his, Bill Strickland with Haroun still in his arms.

A door banged open in one of the walls, and Joseph heard Miss Emmy’s teasing and laughing voice, and another voice, rough and strident and protesting, and he was taken aback when he saw the owner of the voice for he had thought it had come from a man. But a middle-aged woman was entering the hall with a rocking tread, like iron, and the old polished floorboards creaked. Joseph’s first impression of her was that she was a troll, short and wide and muscular, the torso like two big balls superimposed one above the other, the billowing black taffeta skirts made huge by many petticoats, the two balls parted by a white frilled apron. There was, too, the third ball which was her oversized head set squarely on corpulent shoulders straining against black silk. A white ruffle puffed out under the roll of flesh which was her chin, and jet buttons winked over her truly awesome bosom.

But it was her face that immediately caught Joseph’s attention. He decided he had never seen an uglier, more belligerent or more repellent countenance, for the coarse flesh was the color and texture of a dead flounder, the nose bulbous, the tiny eyes pale and vicious, the mouth gross and malignant. Her hair was iron-gray and like unravelled rope, only partly seen from under a mobcap of fine white linen and lace. Her peasant’s hands were as broad as they were long, and swollen.

“Miz Murray, ma’am, it’s home I am,” said Mr. Healey in a most genial voice, and he doffed his hat in a gesture both mocking and elaborate.

She stopped in front of him and made fists of her hands and planted them on her splayed hips. “So I see, sir, so I see, and welcome, I suppose!” she said in that repulsive voice Joseph had just heard. “And what’s this about unexpected visitors, sir?” It was as if Joseph and Bill and Haroun were invisible, but Joseph had caught the malevolent glitter of her eyes for an instant when she had appeared in the hall.

“Now, Miz Murray, these are my friends, Joe Francis here, who’s joined up with me, and little Harry Zeff you see in Bill’s arms. It’s ill, he is, and needs care, and so Bill will go for the doctor when the lad’s in bed.” Mr. Healey spoke genially as always, but now his own face had become rosy rock and the woman’s stare faltered. “You’ll do your best, as my housekeeper, Miz Murray, and ask no questions.”

She dared not show further umbrage towards her employer, but she affected to be disbelieving at the sight of Joseph and Bill and Haroun, and let her mouth fall open in absolute disgust. Miss Emmy’s face, vibrant with happy mischief, now appeared over the woman’s shoulder, and glee danced in her girl’s eyes.

“These, sir, are your friends?” said Mrs. Murray, pointing stiffly.

“They are that, ma’am, and it’s best you hurry before little Harry dies on us,” said Mr. Healey, and laid his hat and cane on a sofa. “Call one of the girls.”

“And their wicker baggage, sir, and their portmanteaus? Or perhaps their traveling trunks are on the way from the depot?”

“That they are,” said Mr. Healey and most of the geniality had left his voice. “Miz Murray, Joe Francis here, and Bill with little Harry, will follow you upstairs and Miss Emmy can call one of the girls. We’re all aweary from the long train and need a wash and refreshments.”

The woman turned like a gray and black monolith, swishing in all her skirts and petticoats, and marched towards the staircase, followed by her master and the sad little procession led by Joseph. She walked heavily on her heels and her manner suggested that she was marching towards the scaffold with determined courage and valor. Mr. Healey chuckled, and they all walked up stairs padded with Persian carpets. Smooth mahogany slid under Joseph’s hand in the duskiness of the stairwell. Now he was beginning to feel his familiar harsh amusement again, and a loathing for Mrs. Murray.

The upper hall was dim also, lighted only by a skylight of colored glass set high in the ceiling of the third story. The passageway was narrower than the one downstairs, and colored light from the skylight splashed on thick Oriental runners and on walls covered with blue silk damask. A row of polished mahogany doors lined the walls, their brass knobs faintly gleaming in the diffused light. And now, a very thin and frightened little housemaid, in black and with a white apron and cap, literally bounced into the hall by way of the rear staircase, all eyes and moist mouth, and cringing. She was hardly more than thirteen, and there was not a single curve on her flat body.

“Liza!” roared Mrs. Murray, seeing an object for her rage. “Where were you? You need a strapping agin, within an inch of your worthless life! We got company, hear? Open those two back rooms, the blue one and the green one, and quick about it, my girl!”

“Yes’m,” whispered the child and raced to one door, throwing it open and then to another, and Joseph thought, And this is what Regina will come to if I do not make money for her, and very soon. Liza stood aside, cowering and with bent head, but her humble attitude did not save her from a resounding slap on her cheek, bestowed by Mrs. Murray. The girl whimpered, but did not lift her eyes. Joseph now saw pockmarks on her thin pale cheeks, and her young face was plain and fearful. In about eight years, thought Joseph, who had seen scores of abused children in America, Regina will be her age, and only I stand between my sister and this.

“Now, here you are, Joe, my lad,” said Mr. Healey, and waved majestically at one open door. “You’ll do with a good wash, and then we’ll have our breakfast like decent Christians, and Bill here will put little Harry down and go for the doctor.”

Joseph fumbled at his pinned pocket and took out his treasured twenty-dollar goldpiece. He held it out to Mr. Healey and even Mrs. Murray’s malign attention was caught.

“What’s this, what’s this?” asked Mr. Healey in surprise.

“For our expenses, Mr. Healey,” said Joseph. “I told you I take no charity.”

Mr. Healey lifted his hand in protest. Then he saw Joseph’s face. Mrs. Murray had sucked in her vindictive mouth, and was staring blankly at the youth, while behind him Bill waited with that sinister patience of his and appeared to see nothing.

“All right,” said Mr. Healey, and he took the shimmering golden coin and tossed it in his hand. “I like a man with pride, and have no quarrel with it.” Now he looked more closely at Joseph, and with curiosity. “Some of the money you—borrowed?”

“No,” said Joseph. “I earned it.”

“Hum,” said Mr. Healey, and put the coin in his pocket, and Mrs. Murray regarded Joseph with squinted and wicked eyes and nodded her head in affirmation of some invidious remark she had made silently to herself. Liza gaped abjectly at Joseph as at an apparition, for now she saw his ragged appearance and his shock of hair like a dull blaze under the skylight.

Mr. Healey turned. “In half an hour, Joe, in half an hour.”

Mrs. Murray followed Mr. Healey to the door of his own room and then stood on the threshold.

“That one’s a thief, sir,” she said. “Plain as day.”

Mr. Healey began to loosen his cravat. He looked at himself in a long mirror on the silken wall. He said, “Possibly, ma’am, very possible. And now please close the door behind you. Unless you’d like to see me nekkid, like Miss Emmy does.” He looked at her blandly, and she rumbled away.