calls out to me as I chug by in my last year's motor; "better stop and
see."

"Yes," I acknowledge simply; and though Polly's eyes and mine meet we
never smile, or twitch an eyelid, or turn a hair; for Sandford is
observing--and this is only June.

So much for Dr. Jekyll Sandford, the Sandford of fifty-one weeks in
the year.

Then, as inevitably as time rolls by, comes that final week; period
of mania, of abandon; and in the mere sorcerous passage of a pair
of whirring wings, Dr. Jekyll, the exemplary, is no more. In his
place, wearing his shoes, audaciously signing his name even to
checks, is that other being, Hyde: one absolutely the reverse of
the reputable Jekyll; repudiating with scorn that gentleman's
engagements; with brazen effrontery denying him utterly, and all the
sane conventionality for which the name has become a synonyme.

Worst of all, rank blasphemy, he not only refuses to set foot in that
modern sanitary office of enamel and tiling, at the corner of
Thirteenth and Main, below which, by day and by night, the "L" trains
go thundering, but deliberately holds it up to ridicule and derision
and insult.

CHAPTER II--THE PRESAGE OF THE WINGS

And I, the observer--worse, the accessory--know, in advance, when the
metamorphosis will transpire.

When, on my desk-pad calendar the month recorded is October, and the
day begins with a twenty, there comes the first premonition of winter;
not the reality, but a premonition; when, at noon the sun is burning
hot, and, in the morning, frost glistens on the pavements; when the
leaves are falling steadily in the parks, and not a bird save the
ubiquitous sparrow is seen, I begin to suspect.

But when at last, of an afternoon, the wind switches with a great
flurry from south to dead north, and on the flag-pole atop of the
government building there goes up this signal: [Transcriber's Note:
signal flag image here]; and when later, just before retiring, I
surreptitiously slip out of doors, and, listening breathlessly, hear
after a moment despite the clatter of the wind, high up in the
darkness overhead that muffled _honk!_ _honk!_ _honk!_ of the
Canada-goose winging on its southern journey in advance of the coming
storm--then I _know_.

So well do I know, that I do not retire--not just yet. Instead, on a
pretext, any pretext, I knock out the ashes from my old pipe, fill it
afresh, and wait. I wait patiently, because, inevitable as Fate,
inevitable as that call f