enough established to be "quaint." They argued with him, telling him he was Freeport's leading citizen and urging him not to injure them by being queer. And because his foot hurt so much he wanted them to go away, he finally promised to give up the fish business.

So Freeport's leading citizen tried to lie abed mornings. But the trouble was, all through his years he had felt so relieved at finding himself awake. Always there had moved just under sleep that awful idea that he might not be able to wake up. So he not only continued to wake, but continued to feel he had averted catastrophe, and on that feeling he always got right up. Now he tried to stay in bed, even though he was awake. He fought a good fight, but he couldn't win it. He would get up and prowl round the house, trying not to be heard, for he disliked discussion of his ways. He would see things about the house that distressed him and he didn't have the fish to turn to. Though one morning, after finding three empty champagne bottles in the billiard-room, he did go down and watch a tall Swede take fish off the four-o'clock train. He followed him as far as the market, watched him go in, stood there a little, then started up the hill toward The Manor-a slight, stooped figure going through silent streets as if pursued.

Josie and Walter and Edna would have done better to have let him alone. The Manor was a lonely place at daybreak. Things that seemed wrong grew monstrously wrong because there was nothing to do but think about themand no one to speak to of what he thought. He would find good food thrown away, and, unable to bear such things, he would go out and walk up and down the street. He would look about for some one to talk to. Waking up before other people do may seem an incident but it leaves one alone in the world. More and more he came to have a need of talking at that hour, as if companionship might take the place of the fish and let him out from things that stalked him before it was really dayold worries which new conditions were so queerly unable to touch. Not having other people's habits cuts you off from the sympathies of the human race.

Every one disliked and despised him for his queer ways. Neighbors who were light sleepers would hear him on his beat and mutter, "Old Owens, out worrying about his money; pity the old fool can't stay in bed at this hour!"-and none of them felt sorry for him, for did he not have more money than he knew what to do with? None of them saw any pity in this broken connection between his money and his feeling about money.

One morning, in a room off Josie's bedroom, he found a dress which had come home and not been unpacked. He lifted the paper and looked at it. It was stuffed out as if there were a form within. It seemed unbearably useless, as if it were just made-and bought-to go over paper stuffing. He tiptoed into Josie's room and opened the door and looked at the dresses. Rows and rows of them -and now she had bought another! Josie lay there asleep, turned from him. He wanted to talk to her. He sat in a chair before the closet door, hoping she would wake. It must be said for him that he never thought of waking her— sleep was to him too escaping a thing to bring any one from it. But he couldn't sit there any longer in the stillness, so quietly he slipped out, not looking at the stuffed-out dress in the outer room. He looked in at Edna's door, at Walter'smaybe one of them was awake. wanted terribly to speak to some one. But they weren't, and he went very softly, not to rouse them. Walter, too, had made a purchase. It was in an open drawer. He stood looking at it awhile; then, to stop looking, hurried out of the house and walked a long way-soft and fast, as if getting away from something. After a while he found himself on that street which, as a little boy, he had taken from home to the office where he got his papers. The houses were as still and strange as they used to be. Again those three blocks did something to him. He made a quick turn toward home, and Josie. He would talk to her; maybe he could tell her about things. He must try.

He

She stirred as he came in this time, said, "Oh, Amos!" as she saw him in overcoat and hat. Sleepily she rubbed her eyes, then exclaimed, "I think it's just too bad for you to act like this!"

He did not answer, but stood there quiet and helpless. She cried:

"If you're determined not to enjoy things yourself, I don't see why you want to spoil them for me and the children!" Then she turned her back and pulled the covers up around her as if to say she'd thank him to go away and let her sleep in peace-as a sensible person should.

So he went away. He tiptoed into Walter's room and looked again at that purchase Walter had made. He stood looking at it until he heard one of the servants on the stairs. Then he could move. Things were never so bad when some one else was up.

All through the next week he would get right out of the house, trying not to see anything, trying especially not to go in Walter's room. He would find people to speak to policemen, early teamsters, men collecting garbage. He would go up to them in that timidly ingratiating way of one pathetically afraid he will not be well received, wistfully trying to cover with a casual tone the importance to him of being received. He would say, "Well, this is a fine morning,' or, "There's nothing like being up early, and they would answer, "That's right," and when he went on, "The nut.' There was one policeman who really talked to him, and he could talk more to this policeman than he had ever talked to any one. He told him how he always had got up early and now he couldn't quit it. He could laugh with him about it. He even told how he used to feel as a little boy going through the still streets, and while he didn't say he still felt that way, telling about it helped the way he felt now. He would walk for blocks with this policeman and talk to him about the fish business. He was a big, hearty policeman, with a warm voice -a voice not at all like the dawn.

All this while he had not lost his touch with his affairs, or his power to deal with them. He went on making money. He was not looked upon as a fool, despite the fact that some said he was "touched." It was only before it was really day, when things were still and thin and very lonely, when they waited, that old fears cut him loose from present security and left him alone and afraid in

a world not quite right. This was a week of special good fortune for him; the return on a Southwestern investment sent him ahead almost fifty thousand dollars, but this increased fortune had absolutely no reach into the anguish of finding half an uncarved chicken in the garbage-can.

And the morning after the half a chicken sent him out into the streets, something else sent him there. Going through the upper hall, he looked into the sitting-room off Josie's bedroom and there he saw another new dress. It sat in an easy-chair as a person might sit— stuffed out with tissue-paper-another dress! In a circle which did not bring him very near he walked round it. It was a strange and to him a terrible color -that thin, weird gray in which a world not quite right waits for day. Slowly his circles came a little closer. Josie had bought this thing this useless thingshe would have to pay for it. One arm of the dress hung limply and the other bulged grotesquely. He had to get away! As if some one were after him, he ran soft-footed into Walter's room and took what he had tried not to know was there. Softly he closed the big front door, as so many times he had closed it while others slept.

He went a little way in the fast, still way he had all his life gone through sleeping streets. He was looking for some one. He wanted that policeman whose voice was like taking you in out of the cold. But he couldn't find him. Frantic and bewildered, he walked round blocks like a lost child. He forgot about the policeman and just went-he didn't care where, he didn't know. If he stopped. . . Anyway, he went Dimly he knew there were people about him now, and then he heard a sound that had sounded through most of his yearsthe pounding rush of an incoming train.

on.

He was meeting it—the four-o'clock train. He walked to the front, where they took off the fish. He saw the familiar crate come through the big door of the baggage-car. It was put on a truck. He stepped up to it. But no-it wasn't his any more. He couldn't take it. He looked around. Who was going to take it? He waited. And then he knew that it was happening!-the thing he had

feared all his life would happen. The The four-o'clock train was in and there was no one to meet it and take the fish.

He waited. It was a rainy morning, and warm. The stuff must be got right to fresh ice! He ran to one end of the station, to the other. He would run back and stand there by the crate-on one foot, on the other, trying not to cry, powerless and watching the thing happen he had shaped his life to keep from happening. He waited as long as he could. And when he couldn't bear it another second he pulled out Walter's revolver and shot himself.

Yet it is a benign world. Things are so arranged that our deaths precede our funerals. Few of us would like our funerals, and the thought of Amos Owens enduring his is something not to be dwelt upon-a -as torture to an animal is not to be dwelt upon. The Owens family tried to make up for the “queerness of his death by the munificence of

his funeral. His death might be quaint -but he had such a funeral as Freeport's leading citizen should have. Indeed, never did even leading citizen have such a funeral before. The old man lay on a couch of violets-something quite new in Freeport funerals. Josie commanded the florist to be right at hand and replace withering violets with fresh ones. Violets never withered faster. It is pleasant to think-indeed necessary to believe that death is unaware. To feel fresh violets being stuck around him. while old ones were really quite fresh enough even the neighbors who had heard him at daybreak would not wish him that. The words "Beloved Husband," which in orchids formed the back of the couch, cost just seven times as much as the dress that drove him to Walter's room for the revolver. But not even the four-o'clock train disturbed him on his couch of violets. At last "Beloved Husband" slept through dawn.