In the little court under the window lay heaps of discarded newspaper
tossed about by the wind. There in the heart of the city, walled in by
the brick warehouse and half concealed under piles of chair legs cans
and broken bottles, lay two logs in their time no doubt, a part of the
grove that once lay about the house. The neighbourhood had passed so
rapidly from country estate to homes and from homes to rented lodgings
and huge brick warehouses that the marks of the lumberman's axe still
showed in the butts of the logs.
McGregor seldom saw the little court except when its ugliness was
refined and glossed over by darkness or by the moonlight. On hot
evenings he laid down his book and leaning far out of the window
rubbed his eyes and watched the discarded newspapers, worried by the
whirlpools of wind in the court, run here and there, dashing against
the warehouse walls and vainly trying to escape over the roof. The
sight fascinated him and brought a thought into his mind. He began to
think that the lives of most of the people about him were much like
the dirty newspaper harried by adverse winds and surrounded by ugly
walls of facts. The thought drove him from the window to renewed
effort among his books. "I'll do something here anyway. I'll show
them," he growled.
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