<1> With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way. When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the feeling that he was distinctly hungry. Yet he alone had eaten. The two children in the other room had been sent early to bed in order that in sleep they might forget they had gone supperless. His wife had touched nothing, and had sat silently and watched him with solicitous eyes. She was a thin, worn woman of the working-class, though signs of an earlier prettiness were not wanting in her face. The flour for the gravy she had borrowed from the neighbor across the hall. The last two ha’pennies had gone to buy the bread.

He sat down by the window on a rickety chair that protested under his weight, and quite mechanically he put his pipe in his mouth and dipped into the side pocket of his coat. The absence of any tobacco made him aware of his action, and, with a scowl for his forgetfulness, he put the pipe away. His movements were slow, almost hulking, as though he were burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles. He was a solid-bodied, stolid-looking man, and his appearance did not suffer from being overprepossessing. His rough clothes were old and slouchy. The uppers of his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy resoling that was itself of no recent date. And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two-shilling affair, showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint stains.

But it was Tom King’s face that advertised him unmistakably for what he was. It was the face of a typical prize-fighter; of one who had put in long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast. It was distinctly a lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it was clean-shaven. The lips were shapeless, and constituted a mouth harsh to excess, that was like a gash in his face. The jaw was aggressive, brutal, heavy. The eyes, slow of movement and heavy-lidded, were almost expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows. Sheer animal that he was, the eyes were the most animal-like feature about him. They were sleepy, lion-like - the eyes of a fighting animal. The forehead slanted quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a villainous-looking head. A nose, twice broken and moulded variously by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard, fresh-shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a blue-black stain.

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這是最后一小塊面包了。湯姆·金用它蘸完了最后一點面醬,把盤子抹得干干凈凈了的,放進口中若有所思地細嚼慢咽著。從桌邊站起身的時候,他明顯地感覺到饑餓并未消除。吃上這頓飯的,只有他一個人。兩個孩子在隔壁房間里被早早地送上了床,因為拿不出晚飯給他們吃。妻子也沒有任何東西可吃。她一聲不響地坐在那兒,關切地望著丈夫。這是個出身于勞動人民階層的女人。身體單薄瘦弱,在她的臉上,還殘存著年輕時美貌的痕跡。她用最后的兩個便士買了面包,所以只好從鄰居家借了點面粉給丈夫做面醬。

湯姆·金在窗旁坐下,那把東倒西歪的破椅子吱吱響著。他機械地拿起煙斗,放進嘴里，然后一只手伸進口袋里,卻沒有找到煙絲。他明明知道口袋是空的,煙絲已沒有了,卻總記不住。他生氣地把煙斗放在一旁,動作緩慢,差不多有些笨拙,龐大的身體, 笨重的肌肉使他有點萎靡不振。他是個身強力壯的家伙,長相也應當說是很有吸引力的。不過他的衣服又破有舊,腳上的鞋子因為穿得太久,鞋底都快要磨穿了。身上的襯衫是兩個先令一件的便宜貨,領口已經爛了,油污也無法洗掉。

只要看一眼湯姆·金的臉,你就準能猜到他是干什么的。這是一張典型的拳擊手的臉,上面有著多年格斗于拳擊場中留下的創傷和歲月本身的痕跡。盡管這張臉刮得干干凈凈的,它還是呈現出一副咄咄逼人的容貌。嚴重變形的嘴巴,仿佛是臉上裂開的一道傷口。下骸粗大,前突。濃眉下的眼睛,深深地陷在沉重的眼皮之中,目光呆滯,毫無表情。

在湯姆·金身上你能看到一種動物的東西,尤其是他的兩只眼睛,像是沒睡醒的獅子的眼睛, 又像是準備一躍而起的野獸的眼睛。他的頭發理得很短,前額向后傾,丑陋的腦袋上看得清每一個疙瘩。鼻子由于無數次的打擊不斷地改變著形狀,有兩次打斷了鼻梁。兩只耳朵,常常弄傷,永遠腫著，比正常人的耳朵大出一倍.剛刮過的臉呈現出青黑色,說明他的胡子,毛發很重。