For some time he sat motionless, listening to the muffled peals of the organ.  Then the humiliating events of the last twenty-four hours began crowding in upon his memory:  the insolent demands of his landlady; the guarded questions of Kling when he inspected the dressing-case; the look of doubt on both their faces and the changes wrought in their manner and speech when they found he was able to pay his way.  Suddenly something which up to that moment he had held at bay gripped him.

“It was money, then, which counted,” he said to himself, forgetting for the moment Kitty’s refusal to take it.  And if money were so necessary, how long could he earn it?  Kling would soon discover how useless he was, and then the tin box, emptied of its contents and the last keepsake pawned or sold, the end would come.

None of these anxieties had ever assailed him before.  He had been like a man walking in a dream, his gaze fixed on but one exit, regardless of the dangers besetting his steps.  Now the truth confronted him.  He had reached the limit of his resources.  To hope for much from Kling was idle.  Such a situation could not last, nor could he count for long either on the friendship or the sympathy of the big-hearted expressman’s wife.  She had been absolutely sincere, and so had her husband, but that made it all the more incumbent upon him to preserve his own independence while still pursuing the one object of his life with undiminished effort.

A flood of light from the suddenly opened church-door, followed by a burst of pent-up melody, recalled him to himself.  He waited until all was dark again, rose to his feet, passed through the gate and, with a brace of his shoulders and quickened step, walked on into Wall Street.

As he made his way along the deserted thoroughfare, where but a few hours since the very air had been charged with a nervous energy whose slightest vibration was felt the world over, the sombre stillness of the ancient graveyard seemed to have followed him.  Save for a private watchman slowly tramping his round and an isolated foot-passenger hurrying to the ferry, no soul but himself was stirring or awake except, perhaps, behind some electric light in a lofty building where a janitor was retiring or, lower down, some belated bookkeeper in search of an error.

Leaving the grim row of tall columns guarding the front of the old custom-house, he turned his steps in the direction of the docks, wheeled sharply to the left, and continued up South Street until he stopped in front of a ship-chandler’s store.

Some one was at work inside, for the rays of a lantern shed their light over piles of old cordage and heaps of rusty chains flanking the low entrance.

Picking his way around some barrels of oil, he edged along a line of boxes filled with ship’s stuff until he reached an inside office, where, beside a kerosene lamp placed on a small desk littered with papers, sat a man in shirt-sleeves.  At the sound of O’Day’s step the occupant lifted his head and peered out.  The visitor passed through the doorway.