"You gang boss!" crashes a voice behind him; "breach me the wall at the corner."
And the battered man and his crew fly at it with pick and bar.
With twisted face and hand clenched on his breast the boy stares at Regan, who has just sent his car home without boarding it at all.
"My path lies through this corner; last night you blocked it; to-day I will pass."
'T is a poor sort of triumph over the vagabond, whose body straightens and stiffens proudly.
"Which I never could do with you on guard! Come; first through the breach, Timothy! 'T is your right. Now we are through—catch stride here in fortune's highway. You are on duty with Dan Regan!"
This queer sentimental thing the man does in honor of his mother's messenger, and never again through all the years is the spell broken which draws the man of pull-down and trample-under away and upward to the things which the pretty colleen of long agone saw beyond the day's work at Turntable. 'T is little we know.
MRS. DRAINGER'S VEIL[17]
By HOWARD MUMFORD JONES