Tony laughed and counted on his fingers: "February, March, April. Three months 'less they's a ice-jam in Ste. Claire."
And Tony went away and forgot.
All the evening the stranger sat there by the stove. Most of the time he hummed, grumbling, to himself. Once he lifted his voice and Riley, behind the bar, made out the words he sang,—
"I've sailed from Lake Superior,
Way down t' Buffalo;
But what's become o' Mary Jane
Is what I'd like t' know."
Distinguishing the words, Riley grinned. He knew the song; it was about a schooner and a woman. Many a time, during the summer, had men from the craft tied up in the river taken on fresh cargoes in his place, and sing it until the smoky ceiling seemed about to lift and soar away into the blue-black sky above.
The next day came, and with it the stranger back again.
"Say," said he, "wot say'e t' lettin' me clean out fer a dime?"
"Nothin'. Go on," Riley replied, and showed him where the broom was. After that it became his task each morning to sweep the floor and shovel the snow away from the door, when there was any to shovel, for a week. For at the end of the week something happened. Riley didn't know of it until afterwards. Tony told him. And his comment was,—
"Th' feller never looked straight t' me, 'n' I ain't surprised." For Red Riley was what you might call a moral man, even if he did "run" the toughest saloon along the entire River Front.
II.
It was Ash Wednesday.
I mean that statement to be quite as general as it sounds. For it was just as much Ash Wednesday in Red Riley's saloon as in the little barren Mariners' Church across the way over the commission house, where Tony rolled barrels and thumped crates and sorted cabbage-heads from seven in the morning until six at night.
Only Red Riley didn't know it was Ash Wednesday, whereas the Reverend Paul Morton did. To be sure, there was a dodger pasted to the swinging door of the saloon inside which read:
"NOTICE!
On the Evening of Feb. 14,
At Eight o'Clock,
The First of a Series of
Daily Lenten Services
Will be Held in
The Mariners' Church,"
but Riley hadn't given it more than a passing glance.
