and the lid so tight!"

He went to the window, and taking out the nail that held down the
sash, pushed it up. Below him lay the great, bustling city, cabs and
cars in constant motion, long lines of blazing lights marking the
thoroughfares, the thunder of trains in the big station, and above and
below and through it all a dull monotonous roar, like the faraway
unceasing cry of a hungry beast.

He sank on his knees by the window, and a restless, nervous look came
into his eyes.

"It presses in, too," he thought. "It's all crowdin' over me. I'm just
me by myself, all alone." A tear made a white course down his grimy
cheek, then another and another. He brushed them impatiently away with
the cap he still held in his hand.

Rising abruptly, he turned away from the window, and the hot air of
the room again smote him. The smoking lamp had blackened the chimney,
and as he bent to turn it down, he caught his reflection in a small
mirror over the table. What the bruises and swelling had left undone
the cheap mirror completed. He started back. Was that the boy he knew
as himself? Was that Sandy Kilday who had come to America to seek his
fortune? He stared in a sort of fascinated horror at that other boy in
the mirror. Before he had been afraid to be by himself, now he was
afraid of himself.

He seized his cap, and blowing out the lamp, plunged down four flights
of steep narrow steps and out into the street. A number of people were
crowding into a street-car marked "Exposition." Sandy, ever a straw in