Hurstwood did not take this to himself.  He thought it to be an expression of individual satisfaction, and so did not answer.  The youth imagined he was out of sorts, and set to whistling softly.  Seeing another man asleep, he quit that and lapsed into silence.

Hurstwood made the best of a bad lot by keeping on his clothes and pushing away the dirty covering from his head, but at last he dozed in sheer weariness.  The covering became more and more comfortable, its character was forgotten, and he pulled it about his neck and slept.  In the morning he was aroused out of a pleasant dream by several men stirring about in the cold, cheerless room.  He had been back in Chicago in fancy, in his own comfortable home.  Jessica had been arranging to go somewhere, and he had been talking with her about it.  This was so clear in his mind, that he was startled now by the contrast of this room.  He raised his head, and the cold, bitter reality jarred him into wakefulness.

“Guess I’d better get up,” he said.

There was no water on this floor.  He put on his shoes in the cold and stood up, shaking himself in his stiffness.  His clothes felt disagreeable, his hair bad.

“Hell!” he muttered, as he put on his hat.

Downstairs things were stirring again.

He found a hydrant, with a trough which had once been used for horses, but there was no towel here, and his handkerchief was soiled from yesterday.  He contented himself with wetting his eyes with the ice-cold water.  Then he sought the foreman, who was already on the ground.

“Had your breakfast yet?” inquired that worthy.

“No,” said Hurstwood.

“Better get it, then; your car won’t be ready for a little while.”

Hurstwood hesitated.

“Could you let me have a meal ticket?” he asked with an effort.

“Here you are,” said the man, handing him one.

He breakfasted as poorly as the night before on some fried steak and bad coffee.  Then he went back.

“Here,” said the foreman, motioning him, when he came in.  “You take this car out in a few minutes.”

Hurstwood climbed up on the platform in the gloomy barn and waited for a signal.  He was nervous, and yet the thing was a relief.  Anything was better than the barn.

On this the fourth day of the strike, the situation had taken a turn for the worse.  The strikers, following the counsel of their leaders and the newspapers, had struggled peaceably enough.  There had been no great violence done.  Cars had been stopped, it is true, and the men argued with.  Some crews had been won over and led away, some windows broken, some jeering and yelling done; but in no more than five or six instances had men been seriously injured.  These by crowds whose acts the leaders disclaimed.