race; green things stirred against the
window-panes; the flash of a robin's wing cut a swift shadow on the
floor and was gone. Below, the horrid clanging of the gong rattled the
walls and called on the dead to rise.

Dink gazed at the opposite bed. Butsey, with the covers wound around
him, with his knees under his chin, was actually asleep. In great
alarm he went over and shook him gently. One eye opened and
reproachfully fastened on him.

"I say, the gong--the gong's rung, Mr. White," said Dink.

"The rising gong?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, when the breakfast gong explodes wake me up."

The eyes shut, but presently reopened and a muffled voice added:

"Pour out water--washbasin--stick my shoes over here."

Dink obeyed, mystified. Then, going to the window, he drank in all the
zest and glory of green fields and blue skies with woolly clouds
drifting over the tingling air. Joyfully he turned for a plunge in
cold water and the unspeakable crockery set met his eye. Then he
remembered. A shadow fell across the room; the day went into eclipse.
Mechanically, heavily, he dressed, and the fever of yesterday sprang
up anew.

Meanwhile, not a sound in the House except down the hall a snore--a
glorious, triumphant note. A second time the gong took up its
discordant march. Then from the cocoon on the bed a flash of legs and
arms sprang out and into the waiting garments. There was a splash in
the basin that spattered the water far and near, and Butsey, enveloped
in a towel, rushed into his upper garments, flung back his hair with a
masterful swooping stroke of the comb, and bolted out of the door,
buckling his belt and struggling into a sweater. Down the stairs they
went in the midst of floating coats, collars to be buttoned and
neckties to be tied; and when the last note of the gong had ended not
a place was vacant, though every eye still drooped with drowsiness.

Breakfast over, Dink followed Butsey to their room and, after the more
permanent preparations had been attended to, they left for chapel.

The much-dreaded breakfast had passed with but one incident; the
Coffee-colored Angel, in passing him the sugar, had said in a terrific
whisper:

"I'll get you to-day. I'll tame you!"

But, being still in a nodding state, his anger was contented with this
slight expression. Tough McCarty had given him just one look, but
somehow he remembered nothing else. The instinctive hostility he had
felt at the first meeting of their e