Main Street crossed the railroad tracks between the station and the freight houses. Parallel to the railroad ran Locust Street, lined on one side with small stores and lodging-houses affected by railroad employés. It was not an attractive part of the town, and the smoke from the engines and the dust raised by the wagons and drays that passed on their way to the freight houses made the fronts of the cheap, unlovely buildings dingy and dirty. But Tom knew he had no right to expect a great deal for two dollars and so began his search philosophically. There were plenty of rooms for rent in those three blocks, but most of them, after his own neat and clean little bedroom at the farm, turned him away in disgust. But at length he found what seemed to answer his purpose. It was a back room in a lodging-house even smaller and meaner-looking than usual, but it was clean and, within its limits, attractive. And the price was better than he had dared hope for. He could have it, said the stout Irishwoman who pantingly conducted him up the flight of steep, uncarpeted stairs, for a dollar and seventy-five cents a week, payable in advance. From the one small window there was a not unattractive view of a diminutive back-yard, which held a prosperous-looking elm tree, and the rear of a livery stable which, being only one story in height, allowed him to look over its flat tar-and-gravel roof to the more distant roofs and spires and trees of Amesville. Tom took the room, paid down fifty cents as earnest money, and agreed to pay the balance Monday morning. His landlady’s name, as she told him on the way downstairs, was Cleary, and her husband worked in the roundhouse. She referred to him as a “hostler,” but Tom didn’t see how a hostler could be employed about engines. He didn’t question her statement, however. She seemed a good-hearted, respectable woman. She had six other lodgers, she informed him, “all illigint tinants,” and proceeded to supply him with the life history of each. Two small children crept bashfully through the door of a back room and stared unblinkingly at Tom until their mother discovered their presence and sent them scurrying out of sight. “Me two youngest,” she explained proudly. “I’ve three more. One do be working for Miller and Tappen, drives a delivery cart, he does, and the next two do be in school. They’re good kiddies, the whole lot of ’em.” Tom finally dragged himself away and crossed over to the station to kill time until his train left, on the whole very well satisfied with the results of his day’s industry. CHAPTER III UNCLE ISRAEL SAYS “NO”