army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse.
The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own age, shabby but neat.
“What’s the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?” asked Thomas, with the freemasonic familiarity of the damned—“Booze? That’s mine. You don’t look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now! Say; how do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rummage sale?”
The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy ex-coachman.
“No,” said he, “mine isn’t exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my unforgiving relatives. I’ve been out of work for a year because I don’t know how to work; and I’ve been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals four months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother. I was turned out of the hospital yesterday. And I haven’t a cent. That’s my tale of woe.”
“Tough luck,” said Thomas. “A man alone can pull
