the go-by. Why, where would you have
been TO-DAY if it hadn't been for me?" Marcus shouted in a sudden
exasperation, "You'd a been plugging teeth at two bits an hour. Ain't
you got any gratitude? Ain't you got any sense of decency?"

"Ah, hold up, Schouler," grumbled Heise. "You don't want to get into a
row."

"No, I don't, Heise," returned Marcus, with a plaintive, aggrieved air.
"But it's too much sometimes when you think of it. He stole away my
girl's affections, and now that he's rich and prosperous, and has got
five thousand dollars that I might have had, he gives me the go-by; he's
played me for a sucker. Look here," he cried, turning again to McTeague,
"do I get any of that money?"

"It ain't mine to give," answered McTeague. "You're drunk, that's what
you are."

"Do I get any of that money?" cried Marcus, persistently.

The dentist shook his head. "No, you don't get any of it."

"Now--NOW," clamored the other, turning to the harnessmaker, as though
this explained everything. "Look at that, look at that. Well, I've done
with you from now on." Marcus had risen to his feet by this time and
made as if to leave, but at every instant he came back, shouting his
phrases into McTeague's face, moving off again as he spoke the last
words, in order to give them better effect.

"This settles it right here. I've done with you. Don't you ever dare
speak to me again"--his voice was shaking with fury--"and don't you sit
at my table in the restaurant again. I'm sorry I ever lowered myself
to keep company with such dirt. Ah, one-horse dentist! Ah, ten-cent
zinc-plugger--hoodlum--MUCKER! Get your damn smoke outa my face."

Then matters reached a sudden climax. In his agitation the dentist had
been pulling hard on his pipe, and as Marcus for the last time thrust
his face close to his own, McTeague, in opening his lips to reply,
blew a stifling, acrid cloud directly in Marcus Schouler's eyes. Marcus
knocked the pipe from his fingers with a sudden flash of his hand; it
spun across the room and broke into a dozen fragments in a far corner.

McTeague rose to his feet, his eyes wide. But as yet he was not angry,
only surprised, taken all aback by the suddenness of Marcus Schouler's
outbreak as well as by its unreasonableness. Why had Marcus broken his
pipe? What did it all mean, anyway? As he rose the dentist made a vague
motion with his right hand. Did Marcus misinterpret it as a gesture of
menace? He sprang back as though avo