at its nearer
corners; and also there appeared, midway between the framing shadows,
down at the lower end of the slender line of the cord, an exaggerated,
wriggling manifestation like the reflection of a huge and misshapen
jumping-jack, which first would lengthen itself grotesquely, and then
abruptly would shorten up, as the tremors running through the dying
man's frame altered the silhouette cast by the oblique sunbeams; and
along with this stencilled vision, as a part of it, occurred shifting
shadow movements of two legs dancing busily on nothing, and of two
foreshortened arms, flapping up and down. It was no pretty picture to
look upon, yet Uncle Tobe, plucking with a tremulous hand at the ends of
his beard, continued to stare at the apparition, daunted and
fascinated. To him it must have seemed as though the Lone-Hand Kid, with
a malignant pertinacity which lingered on in him after by rights the
last breath should have been squeezed out of his wretched carcass, was
painting upon those tall planks the picture and the presentiment of his
farewell threat.

* * * * *

Nearly half an hour passed before the surgeons consented that the body
should be taken down and boxed. His harness which had failed him having
been returned to its owner, he made it up into a compact bundle and
collected his regular fee and went away very quietly. Ordinarily,
following his habitual routine, he would have gone across town to his
little house; would have washed his hands with a bar of the yellow
laundry soap; would have cooked and eaten his breakfast, and then, after
tidying up the kitchen, would have made the customary entry in his
red-backed account-book. But this morning he seemed to have no appetite,
and besides, he felt an unaccountable distaste for his home, with its
silence and its emptiness. Somehow he much preferred the open air, with
the skies over him and wide reaches of space about him; which was doubly
strange, seeing that he was no lover of nature, but always theretofore
had accepted sky and grass and trees as matters of course--things as
inevitable and commonplace as the weathers and the winds.

Throughout the day and until well on toward night he was beset by a
curious, uncommon restlessness which made it hard for him to linger long
in any one spot. He idled about the streets of the town; twice he
wandered aimlessly miles out along roads beyond the town. All the while,
without cessation, the