There was a cloud of them--thicker than
the smoke of coke-ovens. He had breathed that thickness for a long
time, but he got a fresh sense of suffocation now. Toward the
post-office he moved. Around the corner he came upon one of two
brothers whom he remembered as carpenters. He recalled his
inability once to get that gentleman to hang a door for him. He
was a carpenter again now and he carried a saw and a plane. There
was grim humour in the situation. The carpenter's brother had
gone--and he himself could hardly get enough work, he said, to
support his family.
"Goin' to start that house of yours?"
"I think not," said Hale.
"Well, I'd like to get a contract for a chicken-coop just to keep
my hand in."
There was more. A two-horse wagon was coming with two cottage-
organs aboard. In the mouth of the slouch-hatted, unshaven driver
was a corn-cob pipe. He pulled in when he saw Hale.
"Hello!" he shouted grinning. Good Heavens, was that uncouth
figure the voluble, buoyant, flashy magnate of the old days? It
was.
"Sellin' organs agin," he said briefly.
"And teaching singing-school?"
The dethroned king of finance grinned.
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