CHAPTER XXIX


The train was at a standstill somewhere, and the dull, ashen beginnings
of daylight had made a first feeble start toward effacing the lamps in
the car-roof, when the new day opened for Theron. A man who had just
come in stopped at the seat upon which he had been stretched through the
night, and, tapping him brusquely on the knee, said, "I'm afraid I must
trouble you, sir." After a moment of sleep-burdened confusion, he sat
up, and the man took the other half of the seat and opened a newspaper,
still damp from the press. It was morning, then.

Theron rubbed a clear space upon the clouded window with his thumb, and
looked out. There was nothing to be seen but a broad stretch of tracks,
and beyond this the shadowed outlines of wagons and machinery in a yard,
with a background of factory buildings.

The atmosphere in the car was vile beyond belief. He thought of opening
the window, but feared that the peremptory-looking man with the paper,
who had wakened him and made him sit up, might object. They were the
only people in the car who were sitting up. Backwards and forwards,
on either side of the narrow aisle, the dim light disclosed recumbent
forms, curled uncomfortably into corners, or sprawling at difficult
angles which involved the least interference with one another. Here and
there an upturned face gave a livid patch of surface for the mingled
play of the gray dawn and the yellow lamp-light. A ceaseless noise of
snoring was in the air.

He got up and walked to the tank of ice-water at the end of the aisle,
and took a drink from the most inaccessible portion of the common