But I had begun to hate those neighbors with a fierce, unreasoning hatred. In silence they dictated, without assisting. For a dozen years I had lived with them, played with them, been an integral part of their lives, and now they were worse than useless to me. There wasn't one of them big enough to receive me into his home for myself alone, apart from the work I did. There wasn't a true brother among them. Our lives turn upon little things. They turn swiftly. Within fifteen minutes I had solved my problem in a fashion as unexpected as it was radical. CHAPTER IV WE EMIGRATE TO AMERICA Going down the path to town bitterly and blindly, I met Murphy. He was a man with not a gray hair in his head who was a sort of man-of-all-work for the neighborhood. He took care of my furnace and fussed about the grounds when I was tied up at the office with night work. He stopped me with rather a shamefaced air. "Beg pardon, sor," he began, "but I've got a bill comin' due on the new house--" I remembered that I owed him some fifteen dollars. I had in my pocket just ten cents over my carfare. But what arrested my attention was the mention of a new house. "You mean to tell me that you're putting up a house?" "The bit of a rint, sor, in ---- Street." The contrast was dramatic. The man who emptied my ashes was erecting tenements and I was looking for work that would bring me in food. My people had lived in this country some two hundred years or more, and Murphy had probably not been here over thirty. There was something wrong about this, but I seemed to be getting hold of an idea. "How old are you, Murphy?" I asked. "Goin' on sixty, sor." "You came to America broke?" "Dead broke, sor." "You have a wife and children?" "A woman and six childer." Six! Think of it! And I had one. "Children in school?" I asked it almost in hope that here at least I would hold the advantage. "Two of them in college, sor." He spoke it proudly. Well he might. But to me it was confusing. "And you have enough left over to put up a house?" I stammered. "It's better than the bank," Murphy said apologetically. "And you aren't an old man yet," I murmured. "Old, sor?" "Why you're young and strong and independent, Murphy. You're----" But I guess I talked a bit wild. I don't know what I said. I was breathless--lightheaded. I wanted to get back to Ruth. "Pat," I said, seizing his hand--"Pat, you shall have the money within a week. I'm going to sell out and emigrate." "Emigrate?" he gasped. "Where to?" I laughed. The solution now seemed so easy. "Why, to America, Pat. To America where you came thirty years ago." I left him staring at me. I hurried into the house with my heart in my throat.