gs.'

"And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor
front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on
the Palisades.

"And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down the path and
sees a young lady approaching the blasted ruin. She was bare-footed
and had on a white robe, and carried a wreath of white flowers in her
hand. When she got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck
through her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and High
Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to keep from tumbling down on the
floor; for the girl's face was as much like Florence Blue Feather's
as his was like old King Toxicology's.

"And then was when High Jack's booze drowned his system of ethnology.
He dragged me inside back of the statue, and says:

"'Lay hold of it, Hunky. We'll pack it into the other room. I felt
it all the time,' says he. 'I'm the reconsideration of the god
Locomotorataxia, and Florence Blue Feather was my bride a thousand
years ago. She has come to seek me in the temple where I used to
reign.'

"'All right,' says I. 'There's no use arguing against the rum
question. You take his feet.'

"We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into
the back room of the cafe--the temple, I mean--and leaned him against
the wall. It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an
all-night Broadway joint on New-Year's Eve.

"Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk
shawls and began to undress himself.

"'Oh, figs!' says I. 'Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and
subtractor, too. Is it the heat or the call of the wild that's got
you?'

"But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply. He
stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules,
and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and.
stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw.
And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to.

"In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath. Danged
if I wasn't knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked
so exactly much like Florence Blue Feather. 'I wonder,' says I to
myself, 'if she has been reincarcerated, too? If I could see,' says I
to myself, 'whether she has a mole on her left--' But the next minute
I thought she looked one-eighth of a shade darker than Florence; but
she looked good at that. And High Jack hadn't drunk al