He started away. Those iron fingers locked about the prisoner's arm were a needless fetter. The Swede's despairing soul, glimpsed for a moment, had thrown a spell upon Tom, and he would have followed willingly. Their long strides matched, and their heel-clicks coincided. Both were silent. At the end of ten minutes they were in a narrow street, clifted on its either side with tenements that reached up darkly. Presently the Swede turned down a stairway, sentineled by garbage cans. Tom thought they were entering a basement. But Petersen walked on, and in the solid blackness Tom was glad of the hand locked on his arm. They mounted a flight of stone steps, and came into a little stone-paved court. Far above there was a roof-framed square of stars. Petersen led the way across the court and into the doorway of a rear tenement. The air was rotting. They went up two flights of stairs, so old that the wood shivered under foot. Petersen opened a door. A coal oil lamp burned on an otherwise barren table, and beside the table sat a slight woman with a quilt drawn closely about her. She rose, the quilt fell from her shoulders, and she stood forth in a faded calico wrapper. "Oh, Nels! You've come at last!" she said. Then she saw Tom, and drew back a step. "Yah," said Petersen. He dragged Tom after him into the room and swept his left arm about. "See!--De union!" The room was almost bare. The table, three wooden chairs, a few dishes, a cooking-stove without fire,--this was the furniture. Half the plastering was gone from the ceiling, the blue kalsomine was scaling leprously from the walls, in places the floor was worn almost through. In another room he saw a child asleep on a bed. There was just one picture on the walls, a brown-framed photograph of a man in the dress and pose of a prize fighter--a big, tall, angular man, with a drooping mustache. Tom gave a quick glance at Petersen. "See!--De union!" Petersen repeated fiercely. The little woman came quickly forward and laid her hand on Petersen's arm. "Nels, Nels," she said gently. "Yah, Anna. But he is de man vot drove me from ma yob." "We must forgive them that despitefully use us, the Lord says." Petersen quieted under her touch and dropped Tom's arm. She turned her blue eyes upon Tom in gentle accusation. "How could you? Oh, how could you?" Tom could only answer helplessly: "But why don't he join the union?" "How can he?" The words echoed within Tom. How could he? Everything Tom saw had not the value of half the union's initiation fee. There was an awkward silence. "Won't you sit down, brother." Mrs. Petersen offered Tom one of the wooden chairs, and all three sat down. He noted that the resentment was passing from Petersen's eyes, and that, fastened on his wife, they were filling with submissive adoration.