Thus he ploughed his way down the murky street in the direction of the north side bridge. The gloom of a foggy spring evening was added to the smoke and grime of the careless city. The architect felt dirty and uncomfortable, and he knew now that he was condemned to struggle on in this unlovely metropolis, where even the baked meats of life were flung at one ungarnished. Two solid streams of black-dressed humanity were pressing northward over the narrow footpaths of the State Street bridge. Some unit in the throng nudged the architect's elbow. "Hello, Jack Hart!" a man yelped at him, scowling from under his black pot hat. "Going my way?" Jackson grumbled a short assent. He did not care to meet Sayre Coburn at this juncture in his life. Coburn had been a half-starved medical student at Cornell, working his way as a janitor in the chemical laboratory. He had been obliged to drop out before the struggle was quite over, and had gone somewhere else to finish his medical work. Lately he had landed in Chicago and opened an office without knowing a soul in the city beyond the architect and a few other Cornell men, whom he had not sought out. Hart knew that the doctor walked to save car fare, and subsisted on meal tickets at indifferent restaurants. When he had met the man before he had been inclined to patronize him. Now he looked at the dirty collar, the frayed and baggy trousers, the wolfish hunch to the shoulders, and he knew instinctively that these marks came from the fight in its elementary form,--from that beast-tussle to snatch a dollar that some other man wants to get from you! That same hard game, to which his uncle had just condemned him, gave Coburn his bad manners, his hit-you-in-the-face style of address, his vulgar, yelping speech. He suspected that Coburn had gone without clothes and tobacco to feed a lot of guinea-pigs and rabbits on which he was making experiments. But Dr. Coburn told you all that in his harsh, boring voice, just as he told you that your right shoulder was dragging, or your left leg was short, or any other disagreeable fact. "So the old man's money goes to start a school?" Coburn asked, his firm lips wreathing into a slight grin. "That rather cuts you out, don't it? Or, maybe, you and he had some kind of a deal so that all the money don't have to be assessed for inheritance taxes? That's the usual way nowadays." "There's no arrangement," Hart answered shortly. "I had no claim on my uncle's money." The smiling doctor looked at him sideways for a moment, examining the man drolly, without malice. "Well, you wouldn't have turned it down, if it had been passed up to you on a silver dish? Hey? God, I'd like to get a show at some loose cash. Then I could build a first-class laboratory and keep all the animals I want, instead of slopping around here selling pills and guff to old women! But these philanthropic millionnaires don't seem to favor medicine much."