pieces of glass patiently. The coughing in the next
room became louder than ever.

"For heaven's sake!" I went on, "try to be quiet if you can. The people
in the next room want to go to sleep. _Don't_ you hear them coughing?"

"Well! I never heard of such impudence! That coughing has disturbed me
for some time. Anybody would think you'd got into an almshouse for old
women--Where is the sugar?"

"Up there, in the cigar-box. But don't knock that rapier down."

Balder climbed up on a cane chair. It gave way. Klirr! The rapier fell
on the floor, and Balder with it.

"Confound you, do take care. Didn't I warn you?" An energetic knocking
at the door of communication interrupted me.

"Herr Reif, I must really beg you to be quiet," called my landlady's
daughter, not by any means in her sweetest tones. "We've been kept awake
for the last hour."

"That's nothing to us," said Balder from the floor, where he was groping
for the rapier that had rolled under the wardrobe.

"Do be quiet! That is my landlady's daughter, a very respectable girl--"

"Well, is nobody respectable except her? What do you pay rent for?" His
face grew red with rage, and, placing his mouth close to the door, he
called out, "What do you want with Reif? He's in bed. I only wanted to
reach down the sugar, and the old rapier fell on my head--a thing that
might happen to anybody! Just lie down quietly and go to sleep. Such a
fuss about nothing! Are we in a hospital?"

[Illustration: "IT GAVE WAY!"]

"Do be quiet, Balder!" I begged, and my pleading at least had the effect
of silencing whatever else was on his tongue. He thought no more of the
sugar, but sat at the table and drank his self-brewed coffee without it.
When he had finished it he lighted a cigarette, at which he puffed away
till the room was full of smoke. As I lay and looked at him, I fell into
that peaceful state in which dreaming and reality are so much mixed that
it is hard to distinguish between them. And then Balder disappeared in
clouds of smoke, and I heard and saw no more. I was awakened again by a
light being held near my face. Balder was standing at my bedside with
the candle in his hand. "Ah! I'm glad you've been asleep again!" he
said, as I half-opened my eyes and looked at him. "I want to make a poem
to my Spaniard. Have you got a rhyming dictionary anywhere about?"

"There, on the lowest shelf of the bookcase, but _do_ be quiet."

He got the book without knocking anything dow