"Good Lord," gasped Arsdale, "it is you!"
"Yes."
Donaldson wiped his wet brow. He was not in particularly good training for such heavy work.
"But what the deuce—"
"I needed money for a night's lodging and took the first job that offered," he explained.
There was nothing melodramatic in his speech or attitude. He was not posing. He spoke of his necessity in the matter-of-fact way in which he had accepted it. It was necessary to earn the sheer essentials of life, in order to get a footing—to get sufficient capital to open up his office again. He would not have borrowed if he could, and a penniless lawyer in New York is in as bad a position as a penniless tramp. Not only was he glad of this opportunity to earn a couple of dollars, but he found pleasure, in spite of the physical strain, in this most elemental of employments. There was something in the act of forcing his shovel into the earth that brought him comfort in the thought that he was beginning in the cleanest of all clean ways. He was earning his first dollar like a pioneer. He was earning it by the literal sweat of his brow.
He turned back from Arsdale's astonished expression to his task.
"See here, Donaldson," protested the latter excitedly, "this is absurd! You must quit this. I 've money enough—"
"And I have n't," interrupted Donaldson heaving a shovel full of moist dirt into the waiting dump cart.
Even Arsdale was checked by the expression he caught in Donaldson's eyes. He ventured nothing further, but, bewildered, stood there, dumb a moment, before he remembered his message.