Before and behind stretched the line. There was no talking. There was no
sound. The street was empty. It was so still that the passing of a
cable-car in the adjoining thoroughfare grated like prolonged rolling
explosions, beginning and ending at immeasurable distances. The drizzle
descended incessantly. After a long time midnight struck.

There was something ominous and gravely impressive in this interminable
line of dark figures, close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely
still; a close-packed, silent file, waiting, waiting in the vast
deserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without a
movement, there under the night and under the slow-moving mists of rain.

Few in the crowd were professional beggars. Most of them were workmen,
long since out of work, forced into idleness by long-continued "hard
times," by ill luck, by sickness. To them the "bread line" was a
godsend. At least they could not starve. Between jobs here in the end
was something to hold them up--a small platform, as it were, above the
sweep of black water, where for a moment they might pause and take
breath before the plunge.

The period of waiting on this night of rain seemed endless to those
silent, hungry men; but at length there was a stir. The line moved. The
side door opened. Ah, at last! They were going to hand out the bread.

But instead of the usual white-aproned under-cook with his crowded
hampers there now appeared in the doorway a new man--a young fellow who
looked like a bookkeeper's assistant. He bore in his hand a placard,
which he tacked to the outside of the door. Then he disappeared within
the bakery, locking the door after him.