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 and more defiantly; it cast something harder into his whole countenance. Of course his clothes made him different, too, for he had on a heavy, badly cut suit of cheap wool such as roustabouts and deckhands wear; he had a Mackinaw coat and cap on the chair behind him.

"I've got to get out, Steve," he said to me. "That's why I stopped you."

"You've been here all the time?"

He nodded. "In Chicago," he said.

The girl had been keeping away from us, but she stepped up beside him; and I saw again the corn color of her hair, which was like Dorothy Crewe's. She had blue eyes, too; otherwise, she was not like Dorothy. She was pert and bold, this girl—a sort to get what she went after. What was she to Jerry? I wondered. Where had he found her? What was her business here to-night with him?

"He's got to have coin, Steve, don't you see?" she said to me.

"Why?"

"Why?" She laughed at me body after him? Oh, perhaps you ain't heard? You don't read the papers; maybe you don't read. Can't Steve read, Jerry?"