Page:9009 (1908).djvu/39

Rh with the impression that he had carried away from his visit to Tom Ryan.

A few weeks before his arrest, Ryan, meeting him on the street, had taken him to his home for dinner. Ryan was one of the companions of his boyhood, and he had not seen him for years.

Ryan had become, he found, a common plodding workingman—of the class at which he sneered. He was a hod-carrier. He lived in a wretched cottage on the outskirts of the city. He arrived there every evening, his brogans red with brick dust, his shoulders white with plaster, to squat at a table roughly laden by his wife, and shovel food into his harassed body. That evening Collins had eaten with him.

They sat at the table, Ryan with both elbows upon it, gulping the food which Collins hardly touched. Mrs. Ryan, a squarely built, red-faced woman, stood between the stove and the table, keeping the latter plenished. At intervals she leaned over and directed a wandering spoon into the gaping mouth of Myrtle, the little tow-headed elder daughter, or leaned over a crib in