n her blood.

CHAPTER XX

BERTHA MEETS MANHATTAN

It was a green land in which she woke. The leaves were just putting
forth their feathery fronds of foliage, and the shorn lawns, the waving
floods of growing wheat, and the smooth slopes of pastures presented
pleasant pictures to the mountain-born girl. These thickly peopled
farm-lands, the almost contiguous villages, the constant passing of
trains roused in her a surprise and wonder which left her silent. Such
weight of human life, such swarming populations, appalled her. How did
they all live?

At breakfast Haney was in unusual flow of spirits. "'Twas here I rode
the trucks of a freight-car," he said once and again. "In this town I
slept all night on a bench in the depot.... I know every tie from here
to Syracuse. I wonder is the station agent living yet. 'Twould warm me
heart to toss him out ten dollars for that night's lodging. Them was the
great days! In Syracuse I worked for a livery-stableman as hostler, and
I would have gone hungry but for the scullion Maggie. Cross-eyed was
Maggie, but her heart beat warm for the lad in the loft, and many's the
plates of beef and bowls of hot soup she handed to me--poor girl! I'd
like to know where she is; had I the power of locomotion I'd look her
up, too."

Again Bertha was brought face to face with the great sacrifice she was
obscurely contemplating. The magic potency of money was brought before
her eyes as she contrasted the ragged, homeless boy with the man who sat
beside her. The fact that he had not earned the money only made its
magic the more clearly inherent in the gold itself. It panoplied the
thief's carriage. It made dwarfs admirable, and gave dignity and honor
to the lowly. It made it possible for Marshall Haney to retrace in royal
splendor the perilous and painful journey he had made into the West some
thirty years ago--rewarding with regal generosity those who threw him a
broken steak or a half-eaten roll--and she could imaginatively enter
into the exquisite pleasure this largess gave the man.

"And there was Father McBreen," he resumed, with a chuckle--"'sure the
mark of Satan is on the b'y,' he used to say every time my mother told
him of one of my divilments. And he was right. All the same, I'd like to
drop in on him and surprise him with a check"--at the moment he forgot
that he was old and a cripple--"just to let him know the divil hadn't
claimed me yet. I'd like to show him me wife." He put h