I was beginning to look wild-eyed. Ruth and I were living on bread, without butter, and canned soup. I sneaked in town with a few books and sold them for enough to keep the boy supplied with meat. My shoes were worn out at the bottom and my clothes were getting decidedly seedy. The men with whom I was in the habit of riding to town in the morning gave me as wide a berth as though I had the leprosy. I guess they were afraid my hard luck was catching. God pity them, many of them were dangerously near the rim of this same hell themselves. One morning my wife came to me reluctantly, but with her usual courage, and said: "Billy, the grocery man didn't bring our order last night." It was like a sword-thrust. It made me desperate. But the worst of the middle-class hell is that there is nothing to fight back at. There you are. I couldn't say anything. There was no answer. My eyes must have looked queer, for Ruth came nearer and whispered: "Don't go in town to-day, Billy." I had on my hat and had gathered up two or three more volumes in my green bag. I looked at the trim little house that had been my home for so long. The rent would be due next month. I looked at the other trim little houses around me. Was it actually possible that a man could starve in such a community? It seemed like a satanic joke. Why, every year this country was absorbing immigrants by the thousand. They did not go hungry. They waxed fat and prosperous. There was Pasquale, the bootblack, who was earning nearly as much as I ever did. We were standing on the porch. I took Ruth in my arms and kissed her. She drew back with a modest protest that the neighbors might see. The word neighbors goaded me. I shook my fist at their trim little houses and voiced a passion that had slowly been gathering strength. "Damn the neighbors!" I cried. Ruth was startled. I don't often swear. "Have they been talking about you?" she asked suddenly, her mouth hardening. "I don't know. I don't care. But they hold you in ransom like bloody Moroccan pirates." "How do they, Billy?" "They won't let me work without taking it out of you and the boy." Her head dropped for a second at mention of the boy, but it was soon lifted. "Let's get away from them," she gasped. "Let's go where there are no neighbors." "Would you?" I asked. "I'd go to the ends of the earth with you, Billy," she answered quietly. How plucky she was! I couldn't help but smile as I answered, more to myself: "We haven't even the carfare to go to the ends of the earth, Ruth. It will take all we have to pay our bills." "All we have?" she asked. No, not that. They could get only a little of what she and I had. They could take our belongings, that's all. And they hadn't got those yet.