at thimble-rig once more. It
don't hold three fingers, nohow. Hurry, for I got to go to the north
pier right off. That's your little clock striking 6 in there now,
ain't it?"

CHAPTER IX

A HEROIC ACT

David Lockwin is losing ground. He daily grows less likely to attract
the favorable notice of Esther Lockwin, or any other woman of
consequence. His face has not only lost comeliness, but character. It
would seem that the carmen fimbrications just under the skin of his
cheeks flame forth with renewed anger. The difficulty in his throat
increases. He relies nowadays entirely on Corkey.

"And Corkey does not know how rapidly this anxiety is killing me!"

The druggist plans every day to confess all to Corkey. Every day, too,
there is a plan to meet Esther. But as David Lockwin grows small,
Esther grows grand. Talking with the servants of her mother's home has
degraded, declassed, the husband. He has hungered to meet her, yet
months intervene without that bitter joy.

It is a bitter joy. Yesterday, when Lockwin carried a prescription to
the house of a very sick widow, he suddenly came face to face with
Esther. It had been long apparent to the man that the woman was
repelled by his face. This, yesterday, she did not conceal.

The husband trembled with a thousand pleasures as the sacred form
passed by. He struggled with ten thousand despairs as he was robbed of
her company and left to bemoan her disdain.

He worshiped her the more. He read last night, more eagerly, how love
endureth all things. It must fast come to this, that David Lockwin
shall love her at a distance, and that she shall be true to the memory
of the great and good David Lockwin.

Or, he must approach Corkey on the subject of his scheme of reunion.

This morning, washing the windows of the drug-store, the proprietor
revolves the problems of his existence.

"Time is passing," he groans; "too much time."

The gossip of the store deals often with Dr. Tarpion. Dr. Tarpion is
gradually arousing the jealousy of the husband. The burning of the
consolatory letters was a dreadful repulse of the lover's siege.

The druggist has scrubbed the windows with the brush. He is drying
them with the rubber wiper. He stamps the pole on the sidewalk. He
does not want to be jealous, but time is going by--time is going by.
That Tarpion! It would be hard! It would be hard!

A new thought comes. The disfigured face grows malicious.

"It