ned toward him for a breathless
moment, at the end of which the mass glided slowly onward as before.

The crush on the paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but
the fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see
them clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails,
distorted features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers
pursued them from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above.
Ninety-nine out of the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in
their rapid descent they swept others with them. But rising or falling,
they all pushed onward, onward--from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to
me. I watched them for hours, for days, for years--always the same
wandering, the same scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent
purpose or result. Then my blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A
scarlet mist floated before my eyes and my soul swelled within me almost
unto bursting.

"Why?" I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides
until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the
wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all,
turned toward me. On every face I read astonishment.

"Why?" I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above
the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those
staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths
near the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became
contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing
into my face, laughing like demons rather than men.

My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my
clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their
ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance.

"Why?"

As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to
darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked,
bony fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow
ledges to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred
arms seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out
over the river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the
yawning waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness
in my chest seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment
of consciousness in which I heard