They watched the ambulance drive away from in front of the striped awning. Achilles held a card in his thin fingers--a card that would admit him to his boy. Yaxis’s eyes were gloomy with dread, and his quick movements were subdued as he went about the business of the shop, carrying the trays of fruit to the stall outside and arranging the fruit under the striped awning. He was not to go out with the push-cart to-day. There was too much work to do--and Achilles could not let the boy go from him. Later, too, Achilles must go to the hospital--and to the big house on the lake, and someone must be left with the shop. So he kept the boy beside him, looking at him, now and then, with deep, quiet eyes that seemed to see the city taking its toll of life--of children--the children at play and the children at work. This land that he had sought with his boys--where the wind of freedom blew fresh from the prairies and the sea... and even little children were not safe! He seemed to see it--through the day--this great monster that gathered them in--from all lands--and trod them beneath its great feet, crushing them, while they lifted themselves to it and threw themselves--and prayed to it for the new day--that they had come so far to seek. But when Achilles presented his ticket for the boy, at the hospital door, it was a woman of his own race who met him, dark-eyed and strong--and smiled at him a flash of sympathy. “Yes--he is doing well. They operated at once. Come and see. But you must not speak to him.” She led him cautiously down the long corridor between the beds. “See, he is asleep.” She bent over him, touching the bandage. Beneath it, the dark skin was pallid, but the breath came easily from the sleeping lips. She smiled at Achilles, guiding him from the room, ignoring the tears that looked at her. “He is doing well, you see. It was pressure that caused the fever, the bone was not injured. He will recover quickly. Yes. We are glad!” And Achilles, out under the clear sky, raised his face and caught the sound of the city--its murmured, innumerable toil and the great clang of wheels turning. And he drew a deep, quick breath. A city of power and swift care for its own. The land of many hands reaching out to the world. And Achilles’s head lifted itself under the sky; and a mighty force knit within him--a deep, quiet force out of the soul of the past--pledging itself. XV THE POLICE MOVE