Roy Norton

“ He works hard and faithful, but he never goes out anywhere. No woman can interest him more'n a half an hour or so. He sits around, when he thinks I ain't watchin', with his head in his hands—leanin' on his knees. He studies his books sometimes, and then brushes 'em away and looks a long way off—backward, Miss Edith—back at what's gone and can't never come back again no more. ”

“ There's mighty few such industrious fellers as Tommy is, I may tell you, Miss Edith. He was makin' good at the big mine as an engineer. And then he falls in love with a girl. She ain't got nothin' in the way of money, but a home stake in the way of looks. ”

“ It was nearly time for the evening meal when they retraced their way to Shingle, the prospector still perturbed by his companion's reticence and depression.
After the meal was finished, Josh stepped out into the long street that was now being traversed by men whose day's work was finished and by swarms of children who played boisterously in the dusk. He wondered why so many traveled in one direction, and so joined the stream: It led him to the post office that seemed to be a gathering place. ”

“ Good company for mules and roughnecks and them that can't read, write, nor talk. He knows books. I don't. He can read 'em without follerin' the lines with his finger and gettin' stuck on big words. Tommy gets books—Latin books; those funny-lookin' Greek books —and he reads 'em, Miss Edith. Then he makes figures—lots of 'em, strings of 'em—figures that don't count nothin' to a ignorant old cuss like me. Why, do you know what the head professor down at Berkeley University told me after Tommy left? ”

“ Girls ain't interested him none since then. He's like a man that has lost the only thing that keeps the world and all that's in it movin' and liftin' its head and strainin' its muscles and forever tryin' that thing we call hope. ”

“ For a moment he wondered whether he had gone too far, but concluded from her strained attitude and twisted fingers that she was terribly alive to his story.
“Well,” he continued, in a lower voice, “the fireman was wrong, because Tom did come out, on the roof. And in his arms he carried somethin' wrapped in a bedquilt, somethin' that didn't move. Somethin' that lay quite limp and quiet. He stood there on the roof, with the light flamin' up about him, as if dazed. He'd fought to the end, you see. He was all in! He'd gone just as far as he could. He'd got her ”