reality killed the results of many years' imagining. It killed all
imagining, in fact; Hal found that his entire stock of energy, both
mental and physical, was consumed in enduring torment. If any one had
told him the horror of attempting to work in a room five feet high, he
would not have believed it. It was like some of the dreadful devices of
torture which one saw in European castles, the "iron maiden" and the
"spiked collar." Hal's back burned as if hot irons were being run up and
down it; every separate joint and muscle cried aloud. It seemed as if he
could never learn the lesson of the jagged ceiling above his head--he
bumped it and continued to bump it, until his scalp was a mass of cuts
and bruises, and his head ached till he was nearly blind, and he would
have to throw himself flat on the ground.

Then old Mike Sikoria would grin. "I know. Like green mule! Some day get
tough!"

Hal recalled the great thick callouses on the flanks of his former
charges, where the harness rubbed against them. "Yes, I'm a 'green
mule,' all right!"

It was amazing how many ways there were to bruise and tear one's
fingers, loading lumps of coal into a car. He put on a pair of gloves,
but these wore through in a day. And then the gas, and the smoke of
powder, stifling one; and the terrible burning of the eyes, from the
dust and the feeble light. There was no way to rub these burning eyes,
because everything about one was equally dusty. Could anybody have
imagined the torment of that--any of those ladies who rode in softly
upholstered parlour-cars, or reclined upon the decks of steam-ships in
gleaming tropic seas?