His curiosity was sharpened and his judgment impaired.

In a variety of ways literature incapacitates a man for the exigencies of existence.

Dennis found himself visibly enervated. At last he remembered that the week had advanced only as far as Thursday. Between that time and the Fabian Saturday a number of untoward events might occur.

A more seasoned applicant might present himself to the foreman upon whom Dennis depended, or, equally grievous, the present bibulous incumbent might be alarmed into mending his ways.

Hitherto Dennis had resisted the temptation to present himself to the attention of the foreman in advance of the date appointed.

In order, therefore, to master the anxiety which might betray him into some overt importunity, he decided to devote the day to a persistent canvass of the possibilities offered by the various wholesale houses.

Unknown to himself, Dennis had learned that the secret of patience was doing something else in the meantime.

However, the practical at last was triumphant, and Dennis, with a resolution that demanded prompt execution for its continued existence, adjusted the remaining chapter to his waistcoat in the early morning and descended to the lower floor.

On this occasion his solicitous friend behind the bar insisted upon detaining the young Irishman, who, urged by his solitary predicament and a degree depressed by the series of rebuffs which by now had developed a malicious habit, proceeded to the counter and, resting one foot upon the rail near the floor with a redeeming unfamiliarity, responded to the inquiry of the barman by admitting that he felt a "wee bit blue."

This statement led to the revelation that the barman was similarly affected, and was engaged, at that moment, in the preparation of a famous antidote greatly in demand by sundry newsgatherers and night editors in Park Row.

Dennis watched him with interest and remarked that he set out two glasses, after the manner of those who are about to compound an effervescent.

Such, however, was not the case, and Dennis was startled presently to see the barman, after filling both glasses with a decoction which caught the light from a dozen merry angles, push one of them in his direction with the companionable suggestion: "Have one with me."

Only once before had Dennis indulged in anything of a stimulating nature, and the effect upon his head the next morning had been sufficient to discourage its repetition, and he informed the barman of this disagreeable feature.

"Oh!" protested that insinuating Mephisto as he held his glass to the light the better to concentrate its hypnotic gleam and sparkle upon the vacillating youth, "there is no headache in this; this is a man's medicine. Get it down; it will do you good."

Persuaded by the example before him, duped by his depressions, and weary of his loneliness, Dennis responded to the dubious suggestion with the guilty haste of one who has decided to let down the moral bars for a short but sufficient interval.

Palliated from its original rawness by the additions of the barman, the draught was without special bite or pungency in its passage down his throat, and Dennis was aware of his indiscretion only by an increasing glow in the pit of his stomach and a disposition to credit the barman with a degree of amiability beyond that ordinarily manifested by this functionary.

The potation, however, had done its work but partially; there remained the itch of something still to be desired, an elevation yet unattained, and Dennis saw no other way up the sheer height than by an appeal to the barman to duplicate his initial effort.

When this had joined its fluent fellows in their several midsts, Dennis was inexperienced enough to accept, as a matter of course, the genial disposition toward the world in general which replaced the depression of the morning.

A native eloquence, long disused, began to urge him to a sort of confused improvisation.

His data was no longer morose.

"Holdin' on cud do annything," he assured the barman.

"It isn't a bad wurrld, at all, if wan looks at it through grane glasses.

"Shure, I'm in a bit av a hole at prisint, but not too dape to crawl out of."

Then after a pause, to enable himself to "shake hands," so to speak, with the suddenly developed genial aspect of affairs, he informed the barman, with the philosophy of his potations, that "A laugh will always mend a kick, providin' th' kick ain't too hard."

This pleased the barman, who responded in his characteristic fashion, and Dennis, in acknowledgment, substituted the price of breakfast as fitting return of civilities.

However, this was the climax.

Dennis could advance no farther. His bibulous friend, with apprehensive disapproval, offered a few diplomatic suggestions involving the retirement of the young man to his room, which the latter accepted with an unbalanced gravity that administered its reproof even through the callous epidermis of the barman.

Arrived at his room, Dennis, influenced by his accelerated circulation, was convinced that the apartment was oppressively warm, and divested himself of his coat and waistcoat.

In doing so he detached the dickey from his neck, and as it fell to the floor the curious tale contained in its predecessors appealed unmistakably to his enkindled imagination.

Oblivious of the campaign arranged for the day, heedless of the inner protest, Dennis, with all the abandon of his condition, hastened to remove the oil paper from the rear of the dickey, and began a race with his moral lapse in a feverish perusal of the following.

CHAPTER IV

When Raikes returned to his room he seemed to himself like a sunset mocked by the adjacent horizon, with tantalizing suggestions for which it was reflectively responsible.

With the proper inspiration, there is a degree of poetry in the worst of us.

The knowledge that he would be compelled to restore the gem to its owner in the morning bestirred another comparison.

This time his idealism was not so elevated.

He likened it to a divorce from a vampire which had already digested his moral qualities.

The sapphire exhausted him.

The only parallel irritation was one which Raikes inflicted upon himself now and then.

This was on the occasions when he established himself in some unobtrusive portion of the bank and watched with greedy interest the impassive tellers handle immense sums of money with an impersonality which it was impossible for his avarice to comprehend.

The thievery of his thoughts and the ravin of his envy would have provided interesting bases of speculation for the reflective magistrate, since, if, according to the metaphysician, thoughts are things, he committed crimes daily.

Had the Sepoy, by entrusting the gem to the custody of this strange being, intended to harass his shriveled soul, he could not have adopted a more effective plan.

The certainty of the sharp bargain which Raikes could drive with such a commodity in certain localities, affected him with the exasperation which disturbs the lover who discovers in the eyes of his sweetheart the embrace to which he is welcome but from which he is restrained by the presence of her parent.

The many forms of value to which it could be transformed by the alchemy of intelligent barter made distracting appeals.

The facets danced their vivid vertigos into his brain.

At last, starting to his feet with impatient resolution, he hurried to a button in the wall, which controlled the radiator valves.

After a series of complicated movements, he succeeded in swinging aside the entire iron framework beneath it, revealing, directly in the rear, a considerable recess.

In the center of this space a knob protruded surrounded by a combination lock, which, under Raikes' familiar manipulation, disclosed a further cavity.

With an expression not unsuggestive of the mien of the disconsolate relict who has just made her melancholy deposit in the vault, Raikes placed the sapphire in this second recess, closed the combination door, replaced the swinging radiator, and prepared to retire for the remainder of the night.