rk; don't you
know it, Henry?" That rankled. Otherwise Henry, at his old task, with
his mind set free by the toil of his hands, might have been entirely
happy.

"Good Lord!" he said, at length, to the man at his side, a
middle-aged man with a blackened, sardonic face and a forehead lined
with a scowl of rebellion, "do you suppose I do it for the money? I
tell you it's for the work."

"The work!" sneered the other man.

"I tell you I've worked so long I can't stop, and live."

The other man stared. "Either you're a damned fool, or the men or the
system--whatever it is that has worked you so long that you can't
stop--ought to go to--" he growled.

"You can't shake off a burden that's grown to you," said Henry.

The worker on Henry's other side was a mere boy, but he had a bulging
forehead and a square chin, and already figured in labor circles.

"As soon try to shake off a hump," he said, and nodded.

"Yes," said Henry. "When you've lived long enough in one sort of a
world it settles onto your shoulders, and nothing but death can ease
a man from the weight of it."

"That's so," said the boy.

"But as far as keeping the bread from another man goes--" said Henry.
Then he hesitated. He was tainted by the greed for unnecessary money,
in spite of his avowal to the contrary. That also had come to be a
part of him. Then he continued, "As far as that goes, I'm willing to
give away--a--good part of what I earn."

The first man laughed, harshly. "He'll be for giving a library to
East Westland next, to make up to men for having their money and
freedom in his own pockets," he said.

"I 'ain't got so much as all that, after all," said Henry. "Because
my wife has had a little left to her, it don't follow that we are
millionaires."

"I guess you are pretty well fixed. You don't need to work, and you
know it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. There's my wife's
brother can't get a job."

"Good reason why," said the boy on the other side. "He drinks."

"He drinks every time he gets out of work and gets clean
discouraged," retorted the man.

"Well," said the boy, "you know me well enough to know that I'm with
my class every time, but hanged if I can see why your wife's brother
'ain't got into a circle that there's no getting him out of. We've
got to get out of work sometimes. We all know it. We've got to if we
don't want humps on all our shoulders; and if Jim can't live up to
his independence, why, he's out of the r