But it all seemed too late.  When a man has become welded to toil he can never separate himself from it without distress and loss of his own substance of individuality.  What Henry had told Sidney Meeks was entirely true:  good-fortune had come too late for him to reap the physical and spiritual benefit from it which is its usual dividend.  He was no longer his own man, but the man of his life-experience.

When he stood once more in his old place, cutting the leather which smelled to him sweeter than roses, he was assailed by many a gibe, good-natured in a way, but still critical.

“What are you to work again for, Henry?” “You’ve got money enough to live on.”  “What in thunder are you working for?”

One thing was said many times which hit him hard.  “You are taking the bread out of the mouth of some other man who needs work; don’t you know it, Henry?” That rankled.  Otherwise Henry, at his old task, with his mind set free by the toil of his hands, might have been entirely happy.

“Good Lord!” he said, at length, to the man at his side, a middle-aged man with a blackened, sardonic face and a forehead lined with a scowl of rebellion, “do you suppose I do it for the money?  I tell you it’s for the work.”

“The work!” sneered the other man.

“I tell you I’ve worked so long I can’t stop, and live.”

The other man stared.  “Either you’re a damned fool, or the men or the system—­whatever it is that has worked you so long that you can’t stop—­ought to go to—­” he growled.

“You can’t shake off a burden that’s grown to you,” said Henry.

The worker on Henry’s other side was a mere boy, but he had a bulging forehead and a square chin, and already figured in labor circles.

“As soon try to shake off a hump,” he said, and nodded.

“Yes,” said Henry.  “When you’ve lived long enough in one sort of a world it settles onto your shoulders, and nothing but death can ease a man from the weight of it.”

“That’s so,” said the boy.

“But as far as keeping the bread from another man goes—­” said Henry.  Then he hesitated.  He was tainted by the greed for unnecessary money, in spite of his avowal to the contrary.  That also had come to be a part of him.  Then he continued, “As far as that goes, I’m willing to give away—­a—­good part of what I earn.”

The first man laughed, harshly.  “He’ll be for giving a library to East Westland next, to make up to men for having their money and freedom in his own pockets,” he said.

“I ’ain’t got so much as all that, after all,” said Henry.  “Because my wife has had a little left to her, it don’t follow that we are millionaires.”

“I guess you are pretty well fixed.  You don’t need to work, and you know it.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  There’s my wife’s brother can’t get a job.”

“Good reason why,” said the boy on the other side.  “He drinks.”