“Brandon, Ohio—on thirty-five cents! What do you think we are?”
“I didn’t expect ye to carry me all the way to Brandon fer that much,” replied David Joslin. “I only wanted to git out into the aidge of town if I could, so I could find work. Please put me down whar thar’s a brickyard, an’ I kin work my way. I’m a-goin’ out thar to study to be a preacher, ye see.”
The gray old railway conductor looked at him steadily for a time. There was something so frank in the gray eyes that all he could do was to shake his head. “I’ll see you when I’ve finished making my train,” he growled, frowning; but he purposely delayed until after the train was more than two hundred miles west of the city!
“Well, young man,” said he then, “I guess you’d better get off about here. My run ends here. This is quite a manufacturing town, and you can get work in a brickyard, or most any place, I should think. Lord knows, labor’s scarce enough so that anyone can find work who really wants to work.”
“I thank ye very much, sir,” said David Joslin, simply. “Ye’ve been right kind to me. I believe the Lord will bless ye.”
The conductor, abashed, made no reply whatever, but stood looking after him as he slowly strode up the station platform, his gaze this way and that.
The kindly advice of the railroad man proved useful Before mid-afternoon Joslin had once more engaged in day labor in one of the brickyards of this place, a city devoted to manufacturing interests. He was delighted to find that here his wages would be as much as a dollar and a half a day. The foreman showed him a row of little buildings where, among foreigners of all sorts, it might be possible to get quarters and food sufficient to keep soul and body together. Here, then, in a little room half lighted by flaring gas light, within the sound of profanity and continuous card-playing, David Joslin sat down for his first evening alone in the great world of the Outside.
He began his daily practice of copying the letters of the alphabet, using a piece of brown paper which he had found, and the stub of a broken pencil. Having completed a certain amount of this exercise, he turned to the pages of his book, laboriously to read, as best he could, the words of old John Calvin, written long ago, about Eve, and the Garden, and the Serpent and the first great Sin.
He read until he slept even as he sat. But as he slept he dreamed and started moaning. He felt on him all the weight of the original Sin.