And now the train had run into a train shed, and it was quite dark. Will’s hand clutched convulsively into the darkness and alighted upon the old man’s shoulder. Then suddenly, the train had stopped, and the two stood half embracing each other. The tears were quite evident in Will’s eyes, when a brakeman lighted the overhead lamps in the car, but the luckiest thing in the world had happened. The old man, who had seen Will’s tears, thought they were tears of sympathy for his own unfortunate position in life and a look of gratitude came into his blue watery eyes. Well, this was something new in life for him, too. In one of the pauses, when he had first begun telling his tale, Will had said he was going to Erie to try to get work in some factory and now, as they got off the train, the old man clung to Will’s arm. “You might as well come live at our house,” he said. A look of hope flared up in the old man’s eyes. If he could bring home with him, to his young wife, a new boarder, the gloom of his own home-coming would be somewhat lightened. “You come on. That’s the best thing to do. You just come on with me to our house,” he plead, clinging to Will. * * * * * Two weeks had passed and Will had, outwardly, and to the eyes of the people about him, settled into his new life as a factory hand at Erie, Pennsylvania. Then suddenly, on a Saturday evening, the thing happened that he had unconsciously been expecting and dreading ever since the moment when he climbed aboard the freight train in the shadow of Whaley’s Warehouse at Bidwell. A letter, containing great news, had come from Kate. At the moment of their parting, and before he settled himself down out of sight in a corner of the empty coal car, on that night of his leaving, he had leaned out for a last look at his sister. She had been standing silently in the shadows of the warehouse, but just as the train was about to start, stepped toward him and a light from a distant street lamp fell on her face. Well, the face did not jump toward Will, but remained dimly outlined in the uncertain light. Did her lips open and close, as though in an effort to say something to him, or was that an effect produced by the distant, uncertain and wavering light? In the families of working people the dramatic and vital moments of life are passed over in silence. Even in the moments of death and birth, little is said. A child is born to a laborer’s wife and he goes into the room. She is in bed with the little red bundle of new life beside her and her husband stands a moment, fumblingly, beside the bed. Neither he or his wife can look directly into each other’s eyes. “Take care of yourself, Ma. Have a good rest,” he says, and hurries out of the room.