As the train rushed over unknown streets, Marley caught visions of the crowds blockaded by the crossing gates, street-cars already filled with people, empty trucks going after the great loads under which they would groan all the day; and people, people, people, ready for the new day of toil that had come to the earth. At last the train drew up under the black shed of the Union Station, and Marley stood with the passengers that huddled at the door of the car. He went out and down; he joined the crowd that passed through the big iron gates into the station; and then he turned and glanced back for one last look at the train that had brought him; only a few hours before it had been in Macochee; a few hours more and it would be there again. In leaving the train he felt that he was breaking the last tie that bound him to Macochee, and he would have liked to linger and gaze on it. But a man in a blue uniform, with the official surliness, ordered him not to hold back the crowd. He climbed the steps, went out into Canal Street, ran the gantlet of the cabmen, and was caught up in the crowd and swept across the bridge into Madison Street. He was in Chicago, and here among these thousands of people, each hurrying along through the sordid crowd to his own task, here in this hideous, cruel city, he must make a place for himself, and gain the foothold from which he could fight his battle for existence in the world. CHAPTER XXV LETTERS HOME "How does she seem since he went away?" asked Judge Blair of his wife two days after Marley had gone. He spoke in his usual habit of deference to his wife's observation, though his own opportunities for observing Lavinia might have been considered as great as hers. "I haven't noticed any difference in her," said Mrs. Blair, and then she added a qualifying and significant "yet." "Well," observed the judge, "I presume it's too early. Has she heard from him?" "She had a letter this morning; that is, I suppose it was from him; she ran to meet the postman, and then went up stairs." "You didn't mention it to her?" Mrs. Blair looked at her husband in surprise, and he hastened to make amends by acquiescing in the propriety of her conduct, when he said: "Oh, of course not." He seemed to drop the subject then, but that it remained uppermost in his mind was shown later, when he said: "I think she will be weaned away from him after a while, don't you? That is--if he stays long enough." Mrs. Blair was not so hopeful; perhaps, too, in her romantic ideal of devotion, she did not wish Lavinia to be weaned away. But she avoided a direct answer by the suggestion: "Perhaps he will be weaned away from her." This possibility had not occurred to the judge. "Why, the idea!" he said resentfully. "Do you think him capable of such baseness?" Mrs. Blair laughed.