s, while he pulled off his
boots and smoked his good-night cigarette. Jig coiled up in a big
chair, while he studied his jailer.

"But how can you go to bed so early?" he asked.

"Early? It ain't early. Sun's down, ain't it? Why do they bring on
night, except for folks to go to sleep?"

"For my part the best part of the day generally begins when the sun
goes down."

With patient contempt Riley considered John Gaspar. "You look kind of
that way," he decided aloud. "Pale and not much good with your
shoulders. Now, what d'you most generally do with your time in the
evening?"

"Why--talk."

"Talk? Huh! A fine way of wasting time for a growed-up man."

"And I read, you know."

"I can see by the looks of them shelves that you do. How many of them
books might you have read, Jig?"

"All of them."

"I ask you, man to man, ain't they mostly somebody's idea of what life
is?"

"I suppose that's a short way of putting it."

"And I ask you ag'in, what's better to take a secondhand hunch out of
what somebody else thinks life might be, or to go out and do some
living on your own hook?"

Cold Feet had been smiling faintly up to this point, as though he had
many things in reserve which might be said at need. Now his smile
disappeared.

"Perhaps you're right."

"And maybe I ain't." Sinclair brushed the entire argument away into a
thin mist of smoke. "Now, look here, Cold Feet, I'm about to go to
sleep, and when I sleep, I sure sleep sound, taking it by and large.
They's times when I don't more'n close one eye all night, and they's
times when you'd have to pull my eyes open, one by one, to wake me up.
Understand? I'm going to sleep the second way tonight. About eight
hours of the soundest sleep you ever heard tell of."

Jig considered him gravely.

"I'm afraid," he answered, "that I won't sleep nearly as well."

Riley Sinclair smiled. "Wouldn't be no ways nacheral for you to do much
sleeping," he agreed. "Take a gent that's in danger of having his neck
stretched, like you, and most generally he don't do much sleeping. He
lies around awake, cussing his luck, I s'pose. Take you, now, Cold
Feet, and I s'pose you'll be figuring on how far a hoss could carry you
in the eight hours that I'll be sleeping. Eh?"

There was a suggestive lift of the eyebrows, as he spoke, but before
Jig had a chance to study his face, he had turned and wrapped himself
in one of the rugs. He lay perfectly still, stretched on one side, with