The dentist crossed the city, going back to the music store.  It was a little after eleven o’clock.  The night was moonless, filled with a gray blur of faint light that seemed to come from all quarters of the horizon at once.  From time to time there were sudden explosions of a southeast wind at the street corners.  McTeague went on, slanting his head against the gusts, to keep his cap from blowing off, carrying the sack close to his side.  Once he looked critically at the sky.

“I bet it’ll rain to-morrow,” he muttered, “if this wind works round to the south.”

Once in his little den behind the music store, he washed his hands and forearms, and put on his working clothes, blue overalls and a jumper, over cheap trousers and vest.  Then he got together his small belongings—­an old campaign hat, a pair of boots, a tin of tobacco, and a pinchbeck bracelet which he had found one Sunday in the Park, and which he believed to be valuable.  He stripped his blanket from his bed and rolled up in it all these objects, together with the canvas sack, fastening the roll with a half hitch such as miners use, the instincts of the old-time car-boy coming back to him in his present confusion of mind.  He changed his pipe and his knife—­a huge jackknife with a yellowed bone handle—­to the pockets of his overalls.

Then at last he stood with his hand on the door, holding up the lamp before blowing it out, looking about to make sure he was ready to go.  The wavering light woke his canary.  It stirred and began to chitter feebly, very sleepy and cross at being awakened.  McTeague started, staring at it, and reflecting.  He believed that it would be a long time before anyone came into that room again.  The canary would be days without food; it was likely it would starve, would die there, hour by hour, in its little gilt prison.  McTeague resolved to take it with him.  He took down the cage, touching it gently with his enormous hands, and tied a couple of sacks about it to shelter the little bird from the sharp night wind.

Then he went out, locking all the doors behind him, and turned toward the ferry slips.  The boats had ceased running hours ago, but he told himself that by waiting till four o’clock he could get across the bay on the tug that took over the morning papers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Trina lay unconscious, just as she had fallen under the last of McTeague’s blows, her body twitching with an occasional hiccough that stirred the pool of blood in which she lay face downward.  Towards morning she died with a rapid series of hiccoughs that sounded like a piece of clockwork running down.

The thing had been done in the cloakroom where the kindergarten children hung their hats and coats.  There was no other entrance except by going through the main schoolroom.  McTeague going out had shut the door of the cloakroom, but had left the street door open; so when the children arrived in the morning, they entered as usual.