`` I don't have many strays coming to my front door '', he said.

`` I mean, we don't have any way to get there and we can't expect you to quit work just to take us to town ''.

There's someone there I have to see.

I have to think about it.

We'll still have the rifle, and I might be able to round up some more.

As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.

I have it with me, right here.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.

But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!!

Don't like to bother no one unless we have to, which I figger we do, in your case.

`` I have a little job for you, Charlie.

`` You and I have a little talking to do, Jess.

I would have foregone my romantic chances rather than leave a friend sweltering and dusty and -- Well, at least I wouldn't have shouted back a taunt.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

I wouldn't have known the difference.

I don't know yet, it's crazy ; ;

Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.

My future lay solely with the hall, yet what did I know about the hall at this point??

Although I had been inside it I had not yet seen it functioning.

For weeks I wandered about this neighborhood of warehouses and garages, truck terminals and taxi repair shops, gasoline pumps and longshoremen's lunch counters, yet never did I cease to feel myself a stranger there.

`` Yes, George, but I ain't got poor old Pat's body yet.

`` As an independent American I considered all who were not for us, and you amongst the rest, as against us, yet be assured that John Jay never ceased to be the friend of Peter Van Schaack ''.

His reply was, `` Everything that has been printed derogatory to you, purporting to have come from me, was a betrayal, and nothing yet has been printed which I have sanctioned ''.

Although his tender nights were not the ones I dreamed of, nor was it for yachts, sports cars, tall drinks, and swimming pools, nor yet for money or what money buys that I burned, I too was burning and watching myself burn.

Supposing you or I were being accused in this manner, and yet we were doing our level best to carry on our work.

yet the tide is too strong against us, and I fear ( if the framer of hearts help not ) it will force me to little Patience, a little isle next to your Prudence ''.

Meanwhile I myself was not yet saved.

If it proclaims that the best is yet to be, it always arouses, at least in the young, either a suspicious question or perhaps the exclamation of the Negro youth who saw on a tombstone the inscription, `` I am not dead but sleeping ''.

Our litterbug ordinances are not enforced and I have yet to read of a conviction in a littering case.

I was surprised and sorry to find in your issue of March 4 a long and detailed attack upon a book that had not yet been published.

I know that I myself felt that it was a mortal shame for a man to be torn open by a British musket ball, as Isaac had been, yet I also felt relieved and lucky that it had been him and not myself.

All this was unknown to me, and yet I had dared to ask her out for the most important night of the year!!

No one could be more devoted than he to the American Congress as an institution and more aware of its historical significance in the political history of the world, and I shall never forget his moving talks, delivered in simple yet eloquent words, upon the meaning of our jobs as Representatives in the operation of representative government and their importance in the context of today's assault upon popular government.

We have not yet succeeded in establishing recognition of technical specialization comparable to our higher levels of management, but I believe we will trend in this direction but not to exceed vice-president ''.

And you wanted no part of me when I had so much to give.

In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

At first I thought he had missed.

I saw the clergyman kneel for a moment by the twitching body of the man he had shot, then run back to his position.

Later I would remember what this pompous little man had told me about the worth of a ticket.

One afternoon, upon receiving permission and the necessary instructions from the clerk, I had visited the toilet adjoining the hall.

For although I had crossed a corner of the hall on my way to the toilet I still could not tell for sure how far to the rear the darkness extended.

I could observe the two fans down at the end, but their size in themselves meant nothing to me as long as I had no measure of comparison.

I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.

It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.

And I had hardly finished my business in the toilet on the aforementioned occasion when the lights in that place, like the hall lights controlled from the switch in the office, flicked off and on impatiently.

I had signed it off on the forms.