"I'll bet he'll make for the old country, if he can get clear he'll—"
"Europe's full of 'em—reg'lar cesspool they say—"
"Any reward offered?"
"The Company'll have to fork over or there'll be the biggest strike in Flamsted that the stone-cutting business has seen yet—"
"The papers don't say what the shortage is—"
"What's Van Ostend's daughter's name, anybody know?—they say he was sweet on her—"
"She's a good haul," a man laughed hoarsely, insultingly, "but she didn't bite, an' lucky for her she didn't."
"You're 'bout right—them high rollers don't want to raise nothing but game cocks—no prison birds, eh?"
The men passed on, twenty or more. Octavius Buzzby, and the one who in the last hour had left her girlhood behind her, drove homewards in silence. Her eyes were lowered; her white cheeks burned again, but with shame at what she was obliged to hear.