idly; his hard work had strengthened his constitution,
and Molly Shannon modestly withdrew, and Mary Kenny, the landlady, who
had disputed the place from the first, took it and gave Antony what
further care he needed. He missed Molly the first day she left him,
missed her shawl and hat and the music of her Irish voice. He had sent
for books through Joe Mead, and read furiously, realizing how long he
had been without intellectual food.

But the books made him wretched.

Not one of them was written for an artist who had been forced by hard
luck to turn into a day labourer. All the beautiful things he read made
him suffer and desire and long, and worse still, made him rebel. One
phrase out of Werther lingered and fascinated him--

"The miseries of mankind would be lighter if--God knows why this is
so--if they would not use all their imagination to remember their
miseries and to recall to themselves the souvenirs of their unhappy
past."

The unhappy past! Well, was it not sad at his age to have a past so
melancholy that one could not recall it without tears?

Every one but Sanders came to see him, and jolly him up. Joe Mead gave
him to understand that he only lived for the time when Tony should come
back to feed "the Girl," as he called his engine. Tony looked at his
chief out of cavernous eyes. Joe Mead had on his Sunday clothes and
would not light his cigar out of deference to Tony's sick-room.

"You're forty, Mead, aren't you?"

"About that, I guess."

"And I am only twenty-three," returned Fairfax. "Is that going to be a
picture of me at forty?" he thought, and answered himself violently: "My
mother's pride and mine forbid."

"Sanders doesn't come to see me, Joe?"

"Nope," returned the other, "you bet your life. If he ain't waiting for
you at the door with a gun when you come down it's only because he is
off on his job."

When his chief got up to leave him, Fairfax said, "I want you to get me
a book on mechanics, Joe, practical mechanics, and don't pay over a
dollar and a half."

He owed Molly Shannon more than he could ever return. The doctor told
him, because he imagined that it would give the young fireman
satisfaction, that the nursing had saved his life. Sanders was not at
the stair-foot when Fairfax finally crept down to take his first
outing. It was the middle of February and a mild day. Indeed, he had
been at work over a fortnight when he caught sight of Molly and Sanders
standing at the head of