link of steel shoes on the
worn brick pavement of the street, and then heartily shook himself in
his harness, perhaps to dislodge a fly far ahead of its season. Light
had just filmed the windows; and with that the first sparrow woke,
chirped instantly, and roused neighbours in the trees of the small yard,
including a loud-voiced robin. Vociferations began irregularly, but were
soon unanimous.

"Sleep? Dang likely now, ain't it!"

Night sounds were becoming day sounds; the far-away hooting of
freight-engines seemed brisker than an hour ago in the dark. A cheerful
whistler passed the house, even more careless of sleepers than the
milkman's horse had been; then a group of coloured workmen came by, and
although it was impossible to be sure whether they were homeward bound
from night-work or on their way to day-work, at least it was certain
that they were jocose. Loose, aboriginal laughter preceded them afar,
and beat on the air long after they had gone by.

The sick-room night-light, shielded from his eyes by a newspaper propped
against a water-pitcher, still showed a thin glimmering that had grown
offensive to Adams. In his wandering and enfeebled thoughts, which
were much more often imaginings than reasonings, the attempt of the
night-light to resist the dawn reminded him of something unpleasant,
though he could not discover just what the unpleasant thing was. Here
was a puzzle that irritated him the more because he could not solve it,
yet always seemed just on the point of a solution. However, he may have
lost nothing cheerful by remaining in the dark upon the matter; for
if he had been a little sharper in this introspection he might have
concluded that the squalor of the night-light, in its seeming effort
to show against the forerunning of the sun itself, had stimulated some
half-buried perception within him to sketch the painful little synopsis
of an autobiography.

In spite of noises without, he drowsed again, not knowing that he did;
and when he opened his eyes the nurse was just rising from her cot. He
took no pleasure in the sight, it may be said. She exhibited to him a
face mismodelled by sleep, and set like a clay face left on its cheek in
a hot and dry studio. She was still only in part awake, however, and by
the time she had extinguished the night-light and given her patient his
tonic, she had recovered enough plasticity. "Well, isn't that grand!
We've had another good night," she said as she departed to dr