dren going all day without food. I was sick
of the whole affair, but I was determined to stick it
out until the other boys were ready to come back."

"I'm glad you did stick it out," replied the mother,
half resentfully, and kissing him upon the forehead
pretended to busy herself with the work about the
house.

On a summer evening Seth Richmond went to the New
Willard House to visit his friend, George Willard. It
had rained during the afternoon, but as he walked
through Main Street, the sky had partially cleared and
a golden glow lit up the west. Going around a corner,
he turned in at the door of the hotel and began to
climb the stairway leading up to his friend's room. In
the hotel office the proprietor and two traveling men
were engaged in a discussion of politics.

On the stairway Seth stopped and listened to the voices
of the men below. They were excited and talked rapidly.
Tom Willard was berating the traveling men. "I am a
Democrat but your talk makes me sick," he said. "You
don't understand McKinley. McKinley and Mark Hanna are
friends. It is impossible perhaps for your mind to
grasp that. If anyone tells you that a friendship can
be deeper and bigger and more worth while than dollars
and cents, or even more worth while than state
politics, you snicker and laugh."

The landlord was interrupted by one of the guests, a
tall, grey-mustached man who worked for a wholesale
grocery house. "Do you think that I've lived in
Cleveland all these years without knowing Mark Hanna?"
he demanded. "Your talk is piffle. Hanna is after money
and nothing else. This McKinley is his tool. He has
McKinley bluffed and don't you forget it."

The young man on the stairs did not linger to hear the
rest of the discussion, but went on up the stairway and
into the little dark hall. Something in the voices of
the men talking in the hotel office started a chain of
thoughts in his mind. He was lonely and had begun to
think that loneliness was a part of his character,
something that would always stay with him. Stepping
into a side hall he stood by a window that looked into
an alleyway. At the back of his shop stood Abner Groff,
the town baker. His tiny bloodshot eyes looked up and
down the alleyway. In his shop someone called the
baker, who pretended not to hear. The baker had an
empty milk bottle in his hand and an angry sullen look
in his eyes.

In Winesburg, Seth Richmond was called the "deep one."
"He's like his father," men