ned Draper's _Melnotte_ blouse. What the blazes did
you inundate me with that confounded red stuff for?"

Handy looked at him seriously for a minute, and then replied: "There's
gratitude for you. Ah! well, it's the way of the world all over. Help a
man to get out of a scrape, and do you think he will appreciate your
meritorious act? Not even a little bit, and the chances are he will
begin to find fault with your manner of saving him. Darn it, man! that
fiddler, costumer, and stage carpenter would never have swallowed an
ordinary, common garden, every-day fit, but when they saw the gore, the
blood-red gore, they caved-in. It was a demonstration in red, and it did
the work. And now, then, when you are going to have your next
testimonial you can get someone else to manage your fits. Come, Smith.
Good-night, Fogg!"

CHAPTER XV

"Come what, come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

--MACBETH.

Never be it said that fate itself could awe the soul of Fogg. Next day,
when Handy called on him, he found his irrepressible friend preparing to
saunter forth. That he failed to appreciate the humiliation of the
previous evening there was not the slightest reason to believe. His
restless spirit, however, was too strong to compel him willingly to
remain indoors. He was nothing, if not active. In fact, he was miserable
unless when employed in some optimistic scheme. No matter how
impracticable it might appear to others, he invariably perceived a means
to circumvent its difficulties. He believed in taking the biggest kind
of chance on the smallest possibility of success. He was a remarkably
unique proposition.

"Hello, hello!" exclaimed Handy. "What's all this about? Up and dressed.
Say, don't you know you're a sick man?" Fogg gazed at his friend more in
surprise than anger, and turned his head aside. "Did you hear what I
said? You don't mean to tell me that you are going out in the streets
to-day?"

"Why not?" replied Fogg.

"After what took place last night?"

"I must, you know!"

"With a busted blood-vessel in your innards and a--a--a----"

"Oh, come now, Handy, this thing has gone far enough. I appreciate all
you did for me in an emergency, but there's no necessity for keeping up
the deception any longer. I tell you I have an important engagement----"

"Hold! Avast heaving and take a hitch," interrupted the veteran. "Give
me no more of that important engagement business in mine. I