He ate silently, looking neither to right nor left nor across at me.

Here and there, at the various tables, other men were eating, just as silently.

In the whole room there was hardly a note of conversation.

A feeling of gloom pervaded the ill-lighted place.
Many of them sat and brooded over the crumbs of their repast, and made me wonder, as Childe Roland wondered, what evil they had done that they should be punished so.
From the kitchen came the sounds of more genial life, and I ventured into the range where the men were cooking.

But the smell I had noticed on entering was stronger here, and a rising nausea drove me into the street for fresh air.
On my return I paid fivepence for a "cabin," took my receipt for the same in the form of a huge brass check, and went upstairs to the smoking-room.
Here, a couple of small billiard tables and several checkerboards were being used by young working-men, who waited in relays for their turn at the games, while many men were sitting around, smoking, reading, and mending their clothes.