ing, and
had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient provocation for a smashing,
Michael would have accompanied Steward upon the schooner, _Howard_, and
all Michael's subsequent experiences would have been totally different
from what they were destined to be. But destined they were, by chance
and by combinations of chance events over which Michael had no control
and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward himself. At that
period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare of cruelty for Michael
was beyond any wildest forecast or apprehension. And as to forecasting
Dag Daughtry's fate, along with Kwaque, no maddest drug-dream could have
approximated it.

CHAPTER XVII

One night Dag Daughtry sat at a table in the saloon called the
Pile-drivers' Home. He was in a parlous predicament. Harder than ever
had it been to secure odd jobs, and he had reached the end of his
savings. Earlier in the evening he had had a telephone conference with
the Ancient Mariner, who had reported only progress with an exceptionally
strong nibble that very day from a retired quack doctor.

"Let me pawn my rings," the Ancient Mariner had urged, not for the first
time, over the telephone.

"No, sir," had been Daughtry's reply. "We need them in the business.
They're stock in trade. They're atmosphere. They're what you call a
figure of speech. I'll do some thinking to-night an' see you in the
morning, sir. Hold on to them rings an' don't be no more than casual in
playin' that doctor. Make 'm come to you. It's the only way. Now
you're all right, an' everything's hunkydory an' the goose hangs high.
Don't you worry, sir. Dag Daughtry never fell down yet."

But, as he sat in the Pile-drivers' Home, it looked as if his fall-down
was very near. In his pocket was precisely the room-rent for the
following week, the advance payment of which was already three days
overdue and clamorously demanded by the hard-faced landlady. In the
rooms, with care, was enough food with which to pinch through for another
day. The Ancient Mariner's modest hotel bill had not been paid for two
weeks--a prodigious sum under the circumstances, being a first-class
hotel; while the Ancient Mariner had no more than a couple of dollars in
his pocket with which to make a sound like prosperity in the ears of the
retired doctor who wanted to go a-treasuring.

Most catastrophic of all, however, was the fact that Dag Daughtry was
three quarts short of