You are both discharged--I'm in control----"
The President looked at the President's son;
And the son looked at his father's son
In a mirror that hung on the wall nearby
And carefully straightened his yellow tie.
Old Cruickshank waited ill at ease
And felt a trembling in his knees--
The President spoke: "Why, we've just mailed
The notice that this firm has failed."

Chapter XI

After a long journey Gud came to a place where it looked as if it needed
rain. So he sat down upon a cactus and took out his horoscope and
consulted the stars. Then he made an elliptical ring around a new moon
and hung the moon low in the sky. And Gud took a scarlet runner bean and
put it in a pot and lit a fire of cactus thorns and set the pot to boil.
When the thorns began to crackle, an arrogant savor arose from the pot,
and the vapors of it filled the sky, and through the vapors the new-made
moon shown red as the blood of saints torn by lions because of their
faith.

Gud blew his breath on the fire and it waxed hot as anger and the pot
boiled over and quenched the fire. Gud reached his hand into the pot and
drew out the bean and cut it into three halves. And the left half of the
bean he ate, and the right half of the bean he cast into Hell, but the
other half of the bean Gud planted beneath a flat stone that bore the
footprint of a hero who had passed that way when the stone was but a
drifting sand on a lonely shore.

Presently the bean half sprouted, and the sprout split the stone athwart
and rent the footprint of the hero. Gud watered the bean with tears,
because there was no rain in that place. So the bean grew and on its
stem were the leaves of the maiden-hair tree, and the tendrils by which
the bean clambered were the tendrils of the snake-feeder vine, and the
flowers that sprang from the nodules of the bean stalk were the flowers
of the wormwood tree, but they gave forth the odor of liverworts and
were of the color of faded hopes or of stale music.

Gud cut marks on the bean pole to observe the rate of growth of the bean
vine, and he found that it grew much faster than grief dies but not so
fast as jealousy is born.

And when the bean reached the top of the pole and could grow no more, it
conceived and bore a fruit that was like a ripe gourd. Four eyes grew in
the face of the fruit and a dim light shone out of the eyes. And Gud
heard the patter of tiny feet within, and presently the ghost