Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/92

80 Or were they impossible? The elections were coming on. The reformers were making "police graft" the great issue of the campaign. He could give some evidence that would be worth hearing; and if he made Tammany his enemy forever, he would make all respectable citizens his friends. There were other ways of earning a living besides walking the beat, weren't there? A man had a right to call his soul his own, had n't he? He was n't owned by a lot of dirty grafters who could shake him down every time they wanted money, was he? Not by a —!

He raised his head defiantly—his big bullock head. He was n't going to pay them for his right to earn an honest living, Not by a good deal! If he had to leave the department, he 'd go. He could get along. He had saved a little bank account out of his salary. He could get a job somewhere.

He could get a job—for that matter—on the tunnel work, as night-watchman, like old Joe.

The thought was flashed on him by the sight of old Joe's lanterns further up the street, where the red lamps of a tunnel-digging burned in the solitude like the signals of a deserted railway yard. They reminded him that it was time old Joe had his coffee; and he started up the flagstones to relieve the friendly watchman, his shadow now shouldering along determinedly before him, now following doggedly behind.

An iron shutter creaked somewhere in the wind; the blazing windows of a trolley car floated silently across the distant head of the street; a manhole was steaming