"Jas--Jas--for God's sake have you gone crazy? Where'd you get that gun?

Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning--over to my trunk for my watch-dog? Gimme that gun--Jas! You--you're crazy--Jas!"

"You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing pointing? Well, gimme quick."

"Jas--"

"Don't 'Jas' me. I'm ugly this time, and when I'm ugly _I'm ugly!_"

"All right! All right! Only, for God's sakes, Jas, don't get out of bed, don't get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I'll get it. Wait, Jastrow; it's all right, you're all right. I'll get it. See, Teenie's going.

Wait--wait--Teenie's going--"

She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.

"Jas honey, won't you please--"

"Gimme, was what I said--gimme and quick!"

Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.

She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.

"More like it," he said, running his tongue around his mouth; "more like it."

"Jas--Jas, what have you done?"

"Great stuff! Great stuff!" He kept repeating.

"If--if you wasn't so sick, honey--I don't know what I'd do after such a terrible thing like this--you acting like this--so terrible--God! I--I'm all trembling."

"Great stuff!" he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting her. "Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!"

"Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is awful! Try to sleep. If only you don't get a spell--Sleep--please!"

"You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round--he's the one; he's the one!"

"Yes--yes, honey. Try to sleep!"

"I wanna dream I'm Rockefeller. If there's one thing I want to dream, it's Rockefeller."

"Not now--not now--"

"Lemme go to sleep like a king."

"Yes, honey."

"Like a king," I said.

She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.

"There, honey. Go to sleep now--like a king."

He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring of lamplight.

"Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow--oh, wow! If Sid could only see me now!"

"He can, honey--he can. Go to sleep. 'Sh-h-h-h!'"

"Slide 'em under--slide 'em under--Rockefeller."

She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over, cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.

"Jas!"

"Huh?"

"Ain't you all right? You're breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard.

It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey--for God's sake--quit!"

Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so much as cloud.

At nine o'clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door following almost immediately.

"Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it's too late! It's all over, Doctor--Doctor--it's all over!" Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows from an uneven wick.

"You're the Fat, ain't you? The one that's keeping him?"

"What--what--"

"So you're the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy not to get lost in this world. Ain't it like him to the T to pick a good-natured Fat?"

There entered into Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a cluster of sister baubles.

"If it ain't Will to the T! Pickin' hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?"

"Who--Whatta you--want?"

"We was playin' the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?"

"He--Who--You--"

"You're one of them good-natured simps, ain't you? So was I, dearie. It don't pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell him she was fool enough to come because he's flat on his back."

"I--That's him--Jastrow--there--O my God--that's him laying there, miss! Who are you? Sid--I thought--I never knew--Who are you? I thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here-- I--O God!"

There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop the parrot.

"My God!" she said. "Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show.

God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin'-glass I broke in Dayton. I--I musta!"