Suddenly he was done with a desire for solitude and he went below.  A half score of men were idling upon the lower deck.  He began his restless pacings again, stroking his faded beard with a strangely white hand.  Finally he stopped, gazing wistfully at the dark beauty of the ferry tower, sending its winsome shaft up into the quivering night.  A man at his elbow began to speak in the characteristically Californian fashion about the weather.

“Yes,” Fred assented, briefly, “it is a fine night.”

“Too fine,” the stranger returned.  “We need rain.”

“Haven’t you had much down this way, either?” Fred found himself inquiring, glad of a chance to escape for the moment into the commonplace.

“At the beginning of the season it came on a bit, but since Christmas there has been scarcely a drop.  How does the country look?”

Fred leaned against a water barrel and continued to stroke his beard.

“Pretty well burned up.  But the fruit trees will soon be blossoming in spite of everything...  The worst of it is there isn’t any snow in the mountains.”

“Ah, then you’ve been up into the Sierras.”

“Yes, since December...  I had to make my way through the northern passes just after Christmas.  Folks told me it couldn’t be done...  I guess it would have been almost impossible in a wet season.  But things were the same way up north.  No end of rain in the fall and none to speak of since the holidays.  But at that I’ve been through some tough times...  How are things in town?”

The stranger unbuttoned his shabby overcoat and took out a bag of tobacco.  His indifferent suit and thick blue-flannel shirt, which ordinarily would have stamped him as an artisan, was belied by the quality of his speech.

“Things are rotten.  Everybody is striking.  You can’t get work anywhere except you want to scab...  You’d better have stayed where you came from.”

There was a tentative quality in this observation that roused in Fred a vague speculation.  He had a feeling that the stranger was leading up cautiously to some subject.  He looked again, this time sharply, at his companion of the moment.  There was nothing extraordinary in the face except the eyes burning fitfully under the gloom of incredibly thick, coarse, reddish eyebrows.  His mouth was a curious mixture of softness and cruelty, and his hands were broad, but not ungraceful.

“Well, if a man is starving he’ll do almost anything, I guess,” Fred returned, significantly.

“Do you mean that you would—­if you were starving?”

“I’m starving now!” escaped Fred Starratt, almost involuntarily.

“I thought so,” said the other, quietly.

“Why?”

“I’ve seen plenty of starving men in my day.  I know the look.  And you’re suffering in the bargain.  Not physically.  But you’ve been through a hell of some kind.  Am I right?”

“Yes ... you’re quite right.”