That was May. Five months later, when the Hudson flowed between flaming October shores, and the mists of autumn hung like a golden grail on the air, Fairfax leaned out of the window of the engine-cab and cried to another man, in another cab on the opposite track—

"Hello, Sanders; how's your health?"

It was the slang greeting of the time. The engineer responded that he was fine as silk, and rang his bell and passed on his rolling way.

Fairfax wore a red shirt, his trousers were thick with oil and grease. His collar, open at the neck, showed how finely his head was set upon his shoulders, and left free the magnificent column of his throat. Down to his neck came his crisp fair hair, just curling at the ends; his sleeves were up to his elbows and his bare arms were dirty, vigorous and powerful, with the muscles standing out like cords. He never looked at his hands any more, his clever sensitive hands. He had been Joe Mead's fireman for five months, a record ticket for Joe Mead's cab. Fairfax had borne cursing and raging from his chief, borne them with equanimity, feeding into the belly of his engine whatever disgust he felt. Thrown together with these strange men of a different class, he learned new things of life, and at first he was as amused as a child at play. He made two dollars a day. This amply fed him and kept him, and he put by, with a miserliness that was out of all keeping with his temperament, every cent he could spare from the necessities of life.

Not that Fairfax had any plans.

From the first opening of his eyes on West Albany, when he had crawled out of the baggage car in the dawn, he shut out his past from himself. He crushed back even his own identity. He earned his bread by the sweat of his brow in the real sense of the word, and for what reason he saved his money he could not have told. He had become a day labourer, a fireman on the New York Central road, and he was a first-rate hand. His figure in the rude, dirty clothes, his bowler always worn on the back of his blonde head, his limp (that big boot had gone hard with him on the day that he applied for a job at the boss's office), all were familiar in Nut Street by this. His voice, his smile, his rare good heart, made him a popular companion, and he was, too, popular with the women.

His miserable reception in New York, the bruises inflicted upon him by Cedersholm and his uncle, had embittered Tony Fairfax to an extent of which his humble Nut Street friends were ignorant. He didn't do them any harm, however. If any harm were done at all—and there is a question even regarding that—it was done to himself, for he crushed down his ambitions, he thrust them out of his heart, and he bit the dust with a feeling of vengeance. He had been a gentleman with talent, and his own world had not wanted him; so he went down to the people. All that his mother knew was that he had gone on to the north of the State, to perfect certain branches of his art, and that it was better for him to be in Albany. Reclining under the vines, she read his letters, smiling, fanning herself with a languid hand.

"Emmy, Master Tony's getting on, getting on."

"Yas'm, Mis' Bella, I do speck he is."

"Listen, Emmy." And Mrs. Fairfax would read aloud to the devoted negro the letters planned, concocted, by her son in his miserable lodgings, letters which cost him the keenest pangs of his life, kind and tender lines; things he would have done if he could; things he had hoped for and knew would never come true; joys he meant to bring her and that he knew she would grow old and never see; success and fame, whose very sound to him now was like the knell of fate. At the end of the letter he said—

"I am studying mechanics. I reckon you'll laugh at me, mother, but they are useful to a sculptor."

And she had not laughed in the way he meant as she kissed his letter and wet it with her tears.