bakkuk look after
himself. Jim, pass that wine bottle this way."

This to another attendant who was near at hand, and Tode moved away to
attend to other wants, and to turn over in his mind this new and
startling thought.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI.

BUSINESS AND BOTTLES.

He was still thinking when the busy work of the day was done--thinking
anxiously about the same thing.

"It's _there_, plain as day," he said, in a perplexed tone, sitting down
on the corner of the bed, and running his fingers distractedly through
his hair. "'Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest
thy bottle to him.' That's it, word for word, and that's the Bible, and
I do it, why fifty times a day; and I've got to if I stay here. That's a
fact, no getting around it. 'Tain't my bottle, though, it's Mr.
Roberts', and back of him it's Mr. Hastings'. I do declare!" And Tode
paused, overwhelmed with this new thought.

"Whatever do them two men mean now, I'd like to know?" he continued,
after a moment. "Don't make no kind of difference, though; that's
_their_ lookout, I reckon. It's _me_ that puts the bottle to the
neighbors' lips, time and time again. No gettin' around that. They ain't
my neighbors, though. I ain't got no neighbors, them are folks that
lives next door to you. Well, even then, there's Mr. Ryan, he's next
door to mine, and there's young Holden and that peanut man, they're next
door on t'other side, and there's Mr. Pierson, he's next door below.
Why, now, I've got neighbors thick as hops, nearer than most folks have,
and I put the bottle to their lips every day of my life, every single
one of 'em."

Silence for a little, and then another phase of the question.

"Well, now, where's the use? If _I_ didn't hand the bottle to 'em, why
Jim _would_; and they'd get it all the same, so where's the difference?
That's none of my business," Tode answered himself sharply, and with a
touch of the feeling which means, "Get thee behind me, Satan." "It don't
say 'woe to Jim,' and I ain't got nothing to do with him; it don't say
that if it's got to be done anyhow, I may as well do it as any other
fellow. It just says '_woe_' right out, sharp and plain; and I know
about it, and I do it, that's the point. Stick to that point, Tode Mall,
you blockhead, you. If you're arguing a thing, why don't you _argue_,
and not slip and slide all over creation."

Ah, Tode, if only wiser heads than yours would remember that important
i