“For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the laundry.  And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my mouth—­a sizable silver spoon steward—­imagine me, my old sore bones, my old belly reminiscent of youth’s delights, my old palate ticklish yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste learned in younger days—­as I say, steward, imagine me, who had ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that dollar and a half intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on tobacco, never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and indigestibility of our poor fare.  I cadged tobacco, poor cheap tobacco, from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge of dissolution.  Ay, and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in the morning, next cot to mine, I first rummaged his poor old trousers’ pocket for the half-plug of tobacco I knew was the total estate he left, then announced the news.

“Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half.  Don’t you see?—­I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw.  And I sawed out!” His voice rose in a shrill cackle of triumph.  “Steward, I sawed out!”

Dag Daughtry held forth and up his beer-bottle as he said gravely and sincerely: 

“Sir, I salute you.”

“And I thank you, sir—­you understand,” the Ancient Mariner replied with simple dignity to the toast, touching his glass to the bottle and drinking with the steward eyes to eyes.

“I should have had one hundred and fifty-six dollars when I left the poor-farm,” the ancient one continued.  “But there were the two weeks I lost, with influenza, and the one week from a confounded pleurisy, so that I emerged from that place of the living dead with but one hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty cents.”

“I see, sir,” Daughtry interrupted with honest admiration.  “The tiny saw had become a crowbar, and with it you were going back to break into life again.”

All the scarred face and washed eyes of Charles Stough Greenleaf beamed as he held his glass up.

“Steward, I salute you.  You understand.  And you have said it well.  I was going back to break into the house of life.  It was a crowbar, that pitiful sum of money accumulated by two years of crucifixion.  Think of it!  A sum that in the days ere the silver spoon had melted, I staked in careless moods of an instant on a turn of the cards.  But as you say, a burglar, I came back to break into life, and I came to Boston.  You have a fine turn for a figure of speech, steward, and I salute you.”

Again bottle and glass tinkled together, and both men drank eyes to eyes and each was aware that the eyes he gazed into were honest and understanding.