his orders and invitations and awing
the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery blue eyes and
hair parted in the middle.

"It's something scandalous the way they work us poor devils," Joe was
remarking. "If I didn't bowl up, I'd break loose an' burn down the
shebang. My bowlin' up is all that saves 'em, I can tell you that."

But Martin made no answer. A few more drinks, and in his brain he felt
the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl. Ah, it was living, the
first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks. His dreams came
back to him. Fancy came out of the darkened room and lured him on, a
thing of flaming brightness. His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a
flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery. Wonder and beauty walked with
him, hand in hand, and all power was his. He tried to tell it to Joe,
but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would
escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a
great steam laundry.

"I tell yeh, Mart, they won't be no kids workin' in my laundry--not on
yer life. An' they won't be no workin' a livin' soul after six P.M. You
hear me talk! They'll be machinery enough an' hands enough to do it all
in decent workin' hours, an' Mart, s'help me, I'll make yeh
superintendent of the shebang--the whole of it, all of it. Now here's
the scheme. I get on the water-wagon an' save my money for two
years--save an' then--"

But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper, until
that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who, coming
in, accepted Martin's invitation. Martin dispensed royal largess,
inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the gardener's
assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive hobo who slid in
like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of the bar.

CHAPTER XVIII

Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to the
washer.

"I say," he began.

"Don't talk to me," Martin snarled.

"I'm sorry, Joe," he said at noon, when they knocked off for dinner.

Tears came into the other's eyes.

"That's all right, old man," he said. "We're in hell, an' we can't help
ourselves. An', you know, I kind of like you a whole lot. That's what
made it--hurt. I cottoned to you from the first."

Martin shook his hand.

"Let's quit," Joe suggested. "Let's chuck it, an' go hoboin'. I ain't
never tried it, but it must