Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/230

 of Chamboro—though not in any case with immediate or flattering success.

Lonely began to see what many another man had seen long before him, that his dead past was not quite dead to him. The record of his earlier life was a dark one. It would take years and years, he felt, to live it down. Perhaps it would be better, even, if he should go abroad, somewhere in the South Pacific Islands, where one wore goat-skins and lived on cocoanuts and bananas, and where the natives still fought among themselves and resorted to cannibalism, and where there was always good swimming, and sharks' fins for dinner.

The South Sea Islands being out of the question. Lonely did the next best thing, and penetrated to the terra incognita of the Upper River Tile Works, where he went about among the stolid laborers, reminding them of the general depravity of their ways and the utter sinfulness of their speech,—until he was picked up bodily and placed on a wheelbarrow covered with blue clay, and dumped alertly and ignominiously into the river.

"Come agin!" bawled down the burly clay-kneader after him.