with mosquitoes. As a child in a dark room fixes his regard on the
pale light of a comforting window, these toilers watched the sun that
brought around the one hour of the day that tasted less bitter. After
the sundown supper they would huddle together on the river bank, and
send the mosquitoes whining and eddying back from the malignant puffs
of twenty-three reeking pipes. Thus socially banded against the foe,
they wrenched out of the hour a few well-smoked drops from the cup of
joy.

Each week Burney grew deeper in debt. Corrigan kept a small stock of
goods on the boat, which he sold to the men at prices that brought
him no loss. Burney was a good customer at the tobacco counter. One
sack when he went to work in the morning and one when he came in at
night, so much was his account swelled daily. Burney was something
of a smoker. Yet it was not true that he ate his meals with a pipe
in his mouth, which had been said of him. The little man was not
discontented. He had plenty to eat, plenty of tobacco, and a tyrant
to curse; so why should not he, an Irishman, be well satisfied?

One morning as he was starting with the others for work he stopped at
the pine counter for his usual sack of tobacco.

"There's no more for ye," said Corrigan. "Your account's closed. Ye
are a losing investment. No, not even tobaccy, my son. No more tobaccy
on account. If ye want to work on and eat, do so, but the smoke of ye
has all ascended. 'Tis my advice that ye hunt a new job."

"I have no tobaccy to smoke in my pipe this day, Mr. Corrigan," said
Burney, not quite understanding that such a thing could happen to him.

"Earn it," said Corrigan, "and then buy it."

Burney stayed on. He knew of no other job. At first he did not realize
that tobacco had got to be his father and mother, his confessor and
sweetheart, and wife and child.

For three days he managed to fill his pipe from the other men's sacks,
and then they shut him off, one and all. They told him, rough but
friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest
forthcoming to a fellow-man desiring it, but that beyond the immediate
temporary need requisition upon the store of a comrade is pressed with
great danger to friendship.

Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney.
Sucking the corpse of his deceased dudheen, he staggered through his
duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first
time that the curse of Adam was u