n," says I. "There's one due you."

"As it will probably be my last, I guess I will," says he.

Honest, the old gent was so sure he'd croak before mornin' that he
wanted to write some farewell letters, but he was too done up for that.
I tucked him into a spare bed, opened all the windows, and before I
could turn out the light he was sawin' wood like a hired man.

He was still workin' the fog horn when I went in to rout him out at five
o'clock. It was a tough job gettin' him up, but I got him out of his
trance at last.

"Come on," says I, "we've got to do our three miles and have a rub-down
before breakfast."

First off he swore he couldn't move, and I guess he was some stiff from
his sprint the day before, but by the time he'd got out where the birds
was singin', and the trees and grass looked like they'd been done over
new durin' the night, I was able to coax him into a dog-trot. It was a
gentle little stunt we did, but it limbered the old boy up, and after
we'd had a cold shower and a quick rub he forgot all about his joints.

"Well, are you set on keepin' that date in the obituary column, or will
we have breakfast?" says I.

"I could eat cold lobscouse," says he.

"Mother Whaley's got somethin' better'n that in the kitchen," says I.

"I suppose this will finish me," says he, tacklin' the eggs and corn
muffins.

Now, wouldn't that give you the pip? Why, with their specialists and
medicated dope, they'd got the old chap so leery of good straight grub
that he was bein' starved to death. And even after I'd got him braced up
into something like condition, he didn't think it was hardly right to go
on eatin'.

"I expect I ought to go back and start in on that slop diet again," says
he.

I couldn't stand by and see him do that, though. He was too fine an old
sport to be polished off in any such style. "See here, Commodore," says
I, "if you're dead stuck on makin' a livin' skeleton of yourself, why, I
throws up me hands. But if you'll stay here for a couple of weeks and do
just as I say, I'll put you in trim to hit up the kind of life I reckon
you think is worth livin'.

"By glory!" says he, "if you can do that I'll--"

"No you won't," say I. "This is my blow."

Course, it was a cinch. He wa'n't any invalid. There was stuff enough in
him to last for twenty years, if it was handled right. He begun to pick
up right away. I only worked him hard enough to make the meals seem a
long ways apart and the mattress f