nothing that day), but the Carpenter, lean and
hungry, his gray and ragged overcoat flapping
mournfully in the breeze, swung on in a long and
tireless stride which reminded me strongly of the
plains coyote. Both kept their eyes upon the pave
ment as they walked and talked, and every now and
then one or the other would stoop and pick some
thing up, never missing the stride the while. I
thought it was cigar and cigarette stumps they
were collecting, and for some time took no notice.
Then I did notice.

From the slimy sidewalk, they were picking iip
bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems,
and they ivere eating them. The pits of green gage
plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels
inside. They picked up stray crumbs of bread the
size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty one
iv on Id not take them to be apple cores, and these
things these two men took into their mouths, and
chewed them, and swallowed them; and tJris, between
six and seven o clock in the evening of August 20,
year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the great
est, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world
has ever seen.

These two men talked. They were not fools.
They were merely old. And, naturally, their guts
a-reek with pavement offal, they talked of bloody
revolution. They talked as anarchists, fanatics,

[[78]]

p077 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p078w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p079

v?