us and violent hand on my guarantee of good faith. And in
two minutes more they had dragged out on the floor that fine chunk
of molded glass that had cost me fifty dollars to have shipped down
from Frisco.

"'Ice-y?' says the fellow that played me the dishonourable trick;
'verree warm ice-y. Yes. The day is that hot, senor. Yes. Maybeso it
is of desirableness to leave him out to get the cool. Yes.'

"'Yes,' says I, 'yes,' for I knew they had me. 'Touching's
believing, ain't it, boys? Yes. Now there's some might say the seats
of your trousers are sky blue, but 'tis my opinion they are red.
Let's apply the tests of the laying on of hands and feet.' And so I
hoisted both those inspectors out the door on the toe of my shoe,
and sat down to cool off on my block of disreputable glass.

"And, as I live without oats, while I sat there, homesick for money
and without a cent to my ambition, there came on the breeze the most
beautiful smell my nose had entered for a year. God knows where it
came from in that backyard of a country--it was a bouquet of soaked
lemon peel, cigar stumps, and stale beer--exactly the smell of
Goldbrick Charley's place on Fourteenth Street where I used to play
pinochle of afternoons with the third-rate actors. And that smell
drove my troubles through me and clinched 'em at the back. I began
to long for my country and feel sentiments about it; and I said
words about Salvador that you wouldn't think could come legitimate
out of an ice factory.

"And while I was sitting there, down through the blazing sunshine in
his clean, white clothes comes Maximilian Jones, an American
interested in rubber and rosewood.

"'Great carrambos!' says I, when he stepped in, for I was in a bad
temper, 'didn't I have catastrophes enough? I know what you want.
You want to tell me that story again about Johnny Ammiger and the
widow on the train. You've told it nine times already this month.'

"'It must be the heat,' says Jones, stopping in at the door, amazed.
'Poor Billy. He's got bugs. Sitting on ice, and calling his best
friends pseudonyms. Hi!--_muchacho!_' Jones called my force of
employees, who was sitting in the sun, playing with his toes, and
told him to put on his trousers and run for the doctor.

"'Come back,' says I. 'Sit down, Maxy, and forget it. 'Tis not
ice you see, nor a lunatic upon it. 'Tis only an exile full of
homesickness sitting on a lump of glass that's just cost him a
thousand dollars. Now, what wa