udicrous figure, like
that of certain clowns one sees at the circus, contortionists walking
about the sawdust, imitating some kind of enormous dog. Still he swung
his head from side to side with the motion of his shuffling gait, his
eyes dull and fixed. At long intervals he uttered a sound, half word,
half cry, "Wolf--wolf!" but it was muffled, indistinct, raucous, coming
more from his throat than from his lips. It might easily have been the
growl of an animal. A long time passed. Naked, four-footed, Vandover ran
back and forth the length of the room.

By an hour after midnight the sky was clear, all the stars were out, the
moon a thin, low-swinging scimitar, set behind the black mass of the
roofs of the city, leaving a pale bluish light that seemed to come from
all quarters of the horizon. As the great stillness grew more and more
complete, the persistent puffing of the slender tin stack, the three gay
and joyous little noises, each sounding like a note of discreet laughter
interrupted by a cough, became clear and distinct. Inside the room there
was no sound except the persistent patter of something four-footed going
up and down. At length even this sound ceased abruptly. Worn out,
Vandover had just fallen, dropping forward upon his face with a long
breath. He lay still, sleeping at last. The remnant of the great band of
college men went down an adjacent street, raising their cadenced slogan
for the last time. It came through the open window, softened as it were
by the warm air, thick with damp, through which it travelled:

"Rah, rah, rah! Rah, rah, rah!"

Naked, exhausted, Vandover slept profoundly, stretched at full length at
the foot of the bare, white wall of the room beneath two of the little
placards, scrawled with ink, that read, "Stove Here"; "Mona Lisa Here."

Chapter Seventeen

On A certain Saturday morning two years later Vandover awoke in his room
at the Reno House, the room he had now occupied for fifteen months.

One might almost say that he had been expelled from the Lick House. For
a time he had tried to retain his room there with the idea of paying his
bills by the money he should win at gambling. But his bad luck was now
become a settled thing--almost invariably he lost. At last Ellis and the
Dummy had refused to play with him, since he was never able to pay them
when they won. They had had a great quarrel. Ellis broke with him
sullenly, growling wrathfully under his heavy moustache, and