“I didn’t like to take it,” he remarked. “Her husband’s a carpenter and ain’t had no work for six weeks. But she says she couldn’t have me go away hungry. That’s the kind that always helps you, the kind that’s in hard luck themselves, and knows what it is.”
He was for sharing the forage and, hungry as he was, he had not eaten a morsel of it when he rejoined me. That I would take none seemed to him at first a personal slight, but he understood it better when I explained that I had had food at Morris.
There was a cloudless sunset that evening, the sun sinking in a crimson glow that foretold another day of great heat. The stars came slowly out over a firmament of slaty blue, and shone obscurely through the humid air. Farrell and I were silent for some time. Both of us had walked about thirty-six miles that day, and were intent on a resting-place. At last we began to catch the glitter of street-lights in Ottawa, and, at sight of them, Farrell’s spirits rose. He was like one returning home after long absence. The sound of a church-bell came faintly to us. Farrell held me by the arm.
“You hear that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s the Methodist church bell.”
I could see his face light up, as though something were rousing the best that was in him.
At the eastern end of the town, and close to the railway, we came upon a brick-kiln. Farrell was perfectly familiar with his surroundings now, and we stopped for a drink. For some reason the water would not run in the faucet, so we went around to a barn-like building in the rear. Through a large, open doorway he entered, while I remained outside. Soon I heard him in conversation with someone, who proved to be the night-watchman, and, finding that Farrell was not likely to rejoin me soon, I also entered.
Some moments were necessary to accustom one’s eyes to the interior, but I could see at once the figure of a white-bearded old man lying at full length on a bed of gunny-sacks thrown over some sloping boards. His head was propped up, and he held a newspaper which he had been reading by the light of two large torches that hung suspended near him, and from which columns of black smoke rose, curling upward into dark recesses among the rafters. Everything was black with smut and grimy dust. Soon I could see that on one side were great heaps of coal that sloped away to the outer walls like the talus against a cliff.
Farrell was seated on a coal-heap, and was absorbed in the news of the town, as he gathered it from the old man. Quite unnoticed, I sat down on a convenient board and listened dreamily, hoping heartily the while that we should not have to go much further that night.