iver the goods, too; it's like wiping swipes off a bar----"

In his abstraction he had walked into the Holland House, and he suddenly
became conscious that he was confronting a familiarly respectful
bartender.

"Oh, hell," he said, greatly disconcerted, "I want some French vichy,
Gus!" He made a wry face, and added: "Put a dash of tabasco in it, and
salt it."

A thick-lipped, ruddy-cheeked young fellow, celebrated for his knowledge
of horses, also notorious for other and less desirable characteristics,
stood leaning against the bar, watching him.

They nodded civilly to one another. Quest swallowed his peppered vichy,
pulled a long face and said:

"We're a pair of 'em, all right."

"Pair of what?" inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming
rosier and looking more than ever like somebody's groom.

"Pair of bum whips. We've laid on the lash too hard. I'm going to stable
my five nags--my five wits!"--he explained with a sneer as the other
regarded him with all the bovine intelligence of one of his own
stable-boys--"because they're foundered; and that's the why, young
four-in-hand!"

He left the bar, adding as he passed:

"I'm a rotting citizen, but you"--he laughed insolently--"you have
become phosphorescent!"

The street outside was all fog and melting snow; the cold vichy he had
gulped made him internally uncomfortable.

"A gay day to go to Mulqueen's," he muttered sourly, gazing about for a
taxicab.

There was none for hire at that moment; he walked on for a while,
feeling the freezing slush penetrate his boot-soles; and by degrees a
sullen temper rose within him, revolting--not at what he had done to
himself--but at the consequences which were becoming more unpleasant
every moment.

As he trudged along, slipping, sliding, his overcoat turned up around
his pasty face, his cheeks wet with the icy fog, he continued swearing
to himself, at himself, at the slush, the cold vichy in his belly, the
appetite already awakened which must be denied.

Denied?... Was he never to have one more decent drink? Was this to be
the absolute and final end? Certainly. Yet his imagination could not
really comprehend, compass, picture to himself life made a nuisance by
self-denial--life in any other guise except as a background for inertia
and indulgence.

He swore again, profanely asking something occult why he should be
singled out to be made miserable on a day like this? Why, among all the
men he knew, he must g