-they lose all their money. Come in crying. What can I do? I
get after the bums and they say, 'Giotto no good; we will kill him.'
Then I get broke again. Go to West Virginia and work in the
coal-mine--break my leg. And that was the baddest place in the world."

"The mine?"

"And the town. Laborers--Italian, nigger; saloons and politics--Jews;
bosses all Irish--nothing but the saloons and the women to spenda the
money. Company own everything--stores, saloons, women. Pay you the money
and get it all back. Every day a man killed. Hell!"

"Then where did you go?"

"Chicago--printing--anything to do I could get. Sometimes make forty
cents a day. Little. Have to feed and work for wife and three children.
I try and try. Hod-carrier"--Giotto laughed at the memory--"press
coats--anything. Then come back here."

"And what are you doing now?"

"I try to make labor union with Italians. Hard work. Italians live like
pigs--ignorant--not--not _social_. Down-stairs live a Calabria man,
makes ice-cream--got four rooms--in the four rooms man, wife, mother,
five children, fifteen boarders--"

"Go on!" cried Joe. "Why do you stop?"

Giotto laughed.

"So maybe your paper help. Many Italians read English. I make them read
your paper, Mr. Joe."

* * * * *

It was not until nearly the end of the week that Joe sought out Sally
Heffer. Though every day he meditated stepping down that narrow red side
street, each time he had felt unprepared, throbbingly incapable; but
this evening as he finished his work and was on the way home it seemed
that beyond his own volition he suddenly swerved at her corner, hurried
down the lamp-lit pave, searched out the faded number in the meager
light, mounted the stoop, and pushed open the unlocked door.

He was very weary--heart-sick and foot-sore--as he climbed the dark
steps of the three-story house. He felt pent in the vast pulsations of
life about him--a feeling of impossibility, of a task greater than he
could bear. He simply had to see the young woman who was responsible for
sending him here. He had a vivid mental image of her tragic loveliness,
of how she had stepped back and forth before him and suddenly put her
hands to her face and wept, of how she had divined his suffering, and
impulsively seized his hand, and whispered, "I have faith in you." He
expected a sort of self-illumined Joan of Arc with eyes that saw
visions, with spirit flaming. And even in the dar