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 beings who had cause to be impatient and in haste. He looked at the grass and the leaves, and at the fountain that danced and sparkled mechanically in its pool of water-lilies, like something imprisoned there and trained. He remembered his ravine in Coulton and the little waterfall that chuckled over its stones.

He did not notice a man who passed and repassed him with keen glances, studying his clothes, his shoes, his general air of limp discouragement. But he awoke with a start when this stranger sat down on the bench beside him so heavily that the whole seat jarred; and when the man opened his newspaper and turned to the page of "want ads," Don read the list out of the end of his eye, with the involuntary interest of the unemployed. "Never seem to get any less," the man said good-naturedly.

Don looked away, ashamed of having betrayed himself.

"I s'pose they're like that ev'ry day in the year," he went on. And when Don did not speak, he added: "I know it's over a year since I looked at 'em—an' there was just as many then." He glanced around at Don with a cheerful impudence, and Don nodded. He had colourless eyes under heavy eyebrows; his cheek and chin were blue-black with close shaving. "Yes," he said, dropping his paper to his knee, "over a year ago! I was on the rocks, fer fair—sittin' down in Union Square with no more backbone than a string o' fish—readin' those ads without expectin' to find anythin' fer me either." He laughed. "I might 've been readin' them yet—fer all the good it 'd 'a' done me. That's