strain.

To Gallegher the idea of going to sleep seemed almost criminal. From
the dark corner of the cab his eyes shone with excitement, and with
the awful joy of anticipation. He glanced every now and then to where
the sporting editor's cigar shone in the darkness, and watched it as
it gradually burnt more dimly and went out. The lights in the shop
windows threw a broad glare across the ice on the pavements, and the
lights from the lamp-posts tossed the distorted shadow of the cab, and
the horse, and the motionless driver, sometimes before and sometimes
behind them.

After half an hour Gallegher slipped down to the bottom of the cab and
dragged out a lap-robe, in which he wrapped himself. It was growing
colder, and the damp, keen wind swept in through the cracks until the
window-frames and woodwork were cold to the touch.

An hour passed, and the cab was still moving more slowly over the
rough surface of partly paved streets, and by single rows of new
houses standing at different angles to each other in fields covered
with ash-heaps and brick-kilns. Here and there the gaudy lights of a
drug-store, and the forerunner of suburban civilization, shone from
the end of a new block of houses, and the rubber cape of an occasional
policeman showed in the light of the lamp-post that he hugged for
comfort.

Then even the houses disappeared, and the cab dragged its way between
truck farms, with desolate-looking glass-covered beds, and pools of
water, half-caked with ice, and bare trees, and interminable fences.