Page:Low Life (Roche).pdf/9



A poor room at the top of a lodging house in a city in eastern Canada. The time is late afternoon on a foggy day in Spring, but the light coming in at the one window is sufficient for the two men who sit at a table in centre playing at cribbage. At the back of the room is a cupboard, a small stove, and a door leading into the passage. At the left, a door leading into a bedroom. At the right, under the window, a tumbled cot bed.

The men are intent upon their game. Benn, plump, common, good-natured, in shirt and trousers and stockinged feet; Linton, tall, shabby, with an air approaching gentility. He has the self-conscious melancholy of the fallen gentleman, but he really had not very far to fall.