“Firing me? For working too hard?” Hugo laughed. He bent double with laughter. His laughter sounded above the thunder of the mill. “Oh, God, that’s funny. Fire me!” He moved toward the boss menacingly. “I’ve a notion to twist your liver around your neck myself.”

The workers realized that an event of some magnitude was taking place. They drew nearer. Hugo’s laughter came again and changed into a smile—an emotion that cooled visibly. Then swiftly he peeled up the sleeve of his shirt. His fist clenched; his arm bent; under the nose of his boss he caused his mighty biceps to swell. His whole body trembled. With his other hand he took the tall man’s fingers and laid them on that muscle.

“Squeeze,” he shouted.

The boss squeezed. His face grew pallid and he let go suddenly. He tried to speak through his dry mouth, but Hugo had turned his back. At the brick gate post he paused and drew a breath.

His words resounded like the crack of doom. “So long!”

XVIII

In the next four weeks Hugo knew the pangs of hunger frequently. He found odd jobs, but none of them lasted. Once he helped to remove a late snowstorm from the streets. He worked for five days on a subway excavation. His clothes became shabby, he began to carry his razor in his overcoat pocket and to sleep in hotels that demanded only twenty-five cents for a night’s lodging. When he considered the tens of thousands of men in his predicament, he was not surprised at or ashamed of himself. When, however, he dwelt on his own peculiar capacities, he was both astonished and ashamed to meander along the dreary pavements.

Hunger did curious things to him. He had moments of fury, of imagined violence, and other moments of fantasy when he dreamed of a rich and noble life. Sometimes he meditated the wisdom of devouring one prodigious meal and fleeing through the dead of night to the warm south. Occasionally he considered going back to his family in Colorado. His most bitter hours were spent in thinking of Mr. Shayne and of accepting a position in one of Mr. Shayne’s banks.

In his maculate, threadbare clothes, with his dark, aquiline face matured by the war he was a sharp contrast of facts and possibilities. It never occurred to him that he was young, that his dissatisfaction, his idealism, his Weltschmertz were integral to the life-cycle of every man.