of some Kiralfy ballet, very gaudy. By the one window,
chittering all day in its little gilt prison, hung the canary bird, a
tiny atom of life that McTeague still clung to with a strange obstinacy.

McTeague drank a good deal of whiskey in these days, but the only effect
it had upon him was to increase the viciousness and bad temper that had
developed in him since the beginning of his misfortunes. He terrorized
his fellow-handlers, powerful men though they were. For a gruff word,
for an awkward movement in lading the pianos, for a surly look or a
muttered oath, the dentist's elbow would crook and his hand contract to
a mallet-like fist. As often as not the blow followed, colossal in its
force, swift as the leap of the piston from its cylinder.

His hatred of Trina increased from day to day. He'd make her dance yet.
Wait only till he got his hands upon her. She'd let him starve, would
she? She'd turn him out of doors while she hid her five thousand dollars
in the bottom of her trunk. Aha, he would see about that some day. She
couldn't make small of him. Ah, no. She'd dance all right--all right.
McTeague was not an imaginative man by nature, but he would lie awake
nights, his clumsy wits galloping and frisking under the lash of the
alcohol, and fancy himself thrashing his wife, till a sudden frenzy of
rage would overcome him, and he would shake all over, rolling upon the
bed and biting the mattress.

On a certain day, about a week after Christmas of that year, McTeague
was on one of the top floors of the music store, where the second-hand
instruments were kept, helping to move about and rearrange some old
pianos. As he passed by one of the counters he paused abruptly, his eye
caught by an object that was strangely familiar.

"Say," he inquired, addressing the clerk in charge, "say, where'd this
come from?"

"Why, let's see. We got that from a second-hand store up on Polk Street,
I guess. It's a fairly good machine; a little tinkering with the stops
and a bit of shellac, and we'll make it about's good as new. Good
tone. See." And the clerk drew a long, sonorous wail from the depths of
McTeague's old concertina.

"Well, it's mine," growled the dentist.

The other laughed. "It's yours for eleven dollars."

"It's mine," persisted McTeague. "I want it."

"Go 'long with you, Mac. What do you mean?"

"I mean that it's mine, that's what I mean. You got no right to it.
It was STOLEN from me, that's what I mean," he add