The face was white and was so near that he could have reached out and touched it; if the man had opened his eyes at that moment, there was no telling what he might have done. Maybe he’s dead, he thought with despair. No; the man was not dead, for he saw the chest rising and falling. Even though he was still afraid, he was a little more at ease now that he knew that he was not again in the presence of death. The man—long and raw-boned—was stretched out on his back upon a little cot, sleeping in his clothes, his head cushioned by a dirty pillow; his face, clouded by a dark stubble of beard, looked straight up to the ceiling. He stiffened in fear as the man sighed and mumbled and turned his eyes away from the light. I got to turn off that light, he thought quickly. Just as he was about to rise, he looked down and saw a gun and cartridge belt on the floor at the man’s side. Then he was unable to move; he looked at the man’s face again and the old feeling he had experienced so many times down there in the underground returned and he was rooted to the spot. This poor night watchman’s job was to kill or lay down his life to protect those rings and diamonds and watches. Yes, he should get up from here right now and turn out that light, but his body remained rigid. He was filled with reflection, experiencing again that high pitch of consciousness, gazing like an invisible man hovering in space upon the life that lived aboveground in the darkness of the sun. He stood up slowly; the man did not move. He decided to take the gun and the cartridge belt with him, not to use, but just to keep, as one takes a memento from a country fair. He picked up the gun and cartridge belt and clutched them in his left hand, listening to the man breathing regularly in sleep. He was about to click off the light when his eyes fell upon a photograph perched upon a chair near the man’s head; it was a picture of a smiling woman shown against a background of open fields; at the woman’s side were two young children, a boy and a girl. He smiled indulgently; he was overcome with compassion as he looked at the tired old man asleep with the picture of his wife and his children at his side. He could send a bullet into that man’s brain, crashing through his skull, and time would be over for him. . . .

His presence of mind returned and he clicked off the light, groped his way into the basement and struck a match and found the box and jar and piled them into his left arm. He made his way to the storage locker, smiling wistfully, thinking: What a fool! A man with a gun risking his precious life each night—the only life he will ever have on this earth—to protect sparkling bits of stone that looked for all the world like glass. . . . He paused at the hole and set his burden upon the floor and fastened the gun and cartridge belt about his hips; he turned his head and looked back through the darkness toward the room in which the man slept. He had an overpowering urge to go back and wake the man and tell him. . . . He took off his shirt, thinking: No, there ain’t nothing nobody can do for him. . . . He wrapped the jar and box in the shirt and formed a crude bundle which he slung into the narrow opening; he then grabbed the pipe with both hands and poked his head into the hole and rammed the bundle before him until he came, exhausted and almost indifferent, to the sewer, where he could stand up.