A crazy couch, with ragged coverlets, occupied nearly half the room.

A rickety table, a chair, and a couple of boxes left little space in which to turn around.

Five dollars would have purchased everything in sight.

The floor was bare, while the walls and ceiling were literally covered with blood marks and splotches.

Each mark represented a violent death--of an insect, for the place swarmed with vermin, a plague with which no person could cope single-handed.
The man who had occupied this hole, one Dan Cullen, docker, was dying in hospital.