“'Nother weddin'?” said the middleman thickly. “Wa'n't him. 'Nother feller did it. You didn', did you?” Allen shook his head “No.” “Tha's so! Well, tha's right. 'Sh good thing. If 'nother feller does it, 'sh good thing.” They shambled on amiably across the drawbridge. Allen fell behind, stopped, and leaned against the guard rail. In a few moments he could hear their footsteps no more, but he could hear the mutter of the river against the stone piers. Leaning over the rail, he could see here and there a dull glint, though the night was dark; and across the wide spaces over the river he could see the buildings on each side, low, heavy masses, only saved from the smothering night and made sullenly visible by the general glow of the street lamps beyond them. There a few red lights along shore, some in the freight yards, some belonging to anchored or moored vessels, small sail-boats, and long black lumber and coal barges from the northern lakes. He could remember looking down at other times in the night at the dull glint of water, and being shaken as now by the jar of fighting things in his own mind, angry things fighting furiously. At those times it seemed as if some cord within him were strained almost to snapping, but always some passing excitement, some new glittering idea, something to happen on the morrow, had drawn him away. But those moments of despair were associated mainly with the glinting and mutter of dusky water. “I been a fool,” he muttered, and a little later, “What's the use!” He decided to go to the shoe-shop and change his clothes, shave his beard, and pick up a few things, and then hide himself on some outgoing freight train, the other side of Muscadine Street, before the morning came. The morning could not be far off now. Shays would keep quiet, maybe, for a while. He would take Shays' razor. He roused himself and moved on. He began to have glimpses of schemes, tricks, and plans. There were little spots of light in his brain, which for a while had seemed numb, dull, and unstirring. But he carried away with him the impression of the glints of the gloomy river and the mutter of its hurrying. His feet dragged with his weariness. He turned into Muscadine Street and crept along the sidewalk on the right. Suddenly a switch engine in the freight yards glared him in the face with its one blinding eye, yelled and hissed through its steam whistle, and came charging toward him. He leaped aside and fell into a doorway, and lay there crouching. Then he sat up and whimpered, “I ain't fit. I'm all gone away. I ain't fit.”