On Saturday morning there was a little note for him in which the superintendent was obsequiously Father's servant, and humbly informed Father that his services wouldn't be needed after that day. Would he, if it was quite convenient, call for his pay the following Tuesday, and not fail to turn in his locker-key before leaving the establishment? The assistant buyer came around and unhappily told Father that they were letting him go because the department was overstocked with younger, liver men. "I'm mighty sorry, and I wish you good luck," he said, with flash of the real man under the smooth, steely exterior. Father scarcely heard him, though he smiled faintly. He read the note many times as he stumbled home. But he couldn't get himself to show it to Mother till Sunday afternoon, so proud was she of helping him and proving herself a business woman--succeeding in a nine-dollar job while Father, who had once been worth twenty-two good dollars a week, hadn't been able to keep an eight-dollar job. Being quite human, Father felt a scornful envy of her for a minute, when she repeated all the pleasant things that had been said to her. But she was so frank, so touchingly happy, that he could not long harden his heart. When he told her of his ill-fortune she put her hand to her breast and looked desperately afraid. It was only with a dry gasp that she could say: "Never mind, Seth, you'll find something else. I'm glad you don't have to handle all those silly card-cases and all. And so--so--oh, I do hope you find something." "You won't think I'm entirely a failure?" "I won't have you use that word! Don't I know--haven't I seen you for years? Why, I depend on you like--it sounds like a honeymoon, but you're just about my religion, Seth." But she went to bed very early, to be absolutely certain of being on time at Regalberg's Monday morning. * * * * * So began for Seth Appleby the haunted days when, drifting through the gray and ghostly city of winter, he scarce knew whether he was a real man or a ghost. Down prison corridors that the city calls streets, among Jewish and Italian firms of which he had never heard, he wandered aimlessly, asking with more and more diffidence for work, any kind of work. His shoes were ground down at the heel, now, and cracked open on one side. In such footgear he dared not enter a shoe-store, his own realm, to ask for work that he really could do. As his December drifted toward Christmas like a rudderless steamer in a fog, the cold permitted him to seek for work only an hour or two a day, for he had no overcoat and his coat was very thin. Seth Appleby didn't think of himself as one of the rank of paupers, but rather as a man who didn't have an overcoat.