He had gone about the place to see that
all of the doors and windows were fastened. Removing his shoes and his
coat, he hurriedly crawled in between the blankets and blew out the
light. Sleep would not come. He was sobbing. He got up twice and
lighted the candle, once to put away the motto, again to take out of
the trunk the cabinet size photograph of himself and Nellie and the
baby, taken when the latter was three years old. Hugging this to his
breast, he started back to bed.

A sudden thought staggered him. For a long time he stood in the middle
of the room, shivering as he debated the great question this thought
presented. At last, with a shudder, he urged his reluctant feet to
carry him across the room to the single gas jet. Closing his eyes he
turned on the gas full force and then leaped into the bed, holding the
portrait to his heart. Then he waited for the end of everything.

When he opened his eyes broad daylight was streaming in upon him. Some
one was pounding on the door downstairs. He leaped out of bed and
began to pull on his shoes.

Suddenly it occurred to him that by all rights he should be lying
there stiff and cold, suffocated by the escaping gas. He sniffed the
air. There was no odour of gas. With a gasp of alarm he rushed over
and turned off the stopcock, a cold perspiration coming out all over
him.

"Gee, I hope I'm in time!" he groaned aloud. "I don't want to die.
I--I--it's different in the daytime. The darkness did it. I hope
I'm----" Then, considerably puzzled, he interrupted himself to turn
the thing on again. He stood on his toes to smell the tip. "By jingo,
I remember now, that fellow turned it off in the meter yesterday. Oh,
Lord; what a close call I've had!"

He was so full of glee when he opened the door to admit the packers
that they neglected, in their astonishment, to growl at him for
keeping them standing in the cold for fifteen or twenty minutes.

"Thought maybe you'd gone and done it," said the foreman. "Took poison
or turned on the gas, or something. You was mighty blue yesterday,
Mr.--Mr. Duluth."

With the arrival of the van he set off to pay the bills due the
tradespeople in town, returning before noon with all the receipts, and
something like $20 left over. The world did not look so dark and
dreary to him now. In his mind's eye he saw himself rehabilitated in
the sight of the scoffers, prospering ere long to such an extent that
not only would he be able to reclaim Phoebe,