ne foot
advanced, as if still keeping up the poor cramped steps with which he
had fought off death. The one who is still alive floats around and
around, with these dead men standing stiffly on their islands, all day,
sometimes so near them that the air about him is stirred by their icy
forms as they pass. At evening his cake drifts away through an opening
toward the south, and he sees them no more, save that after him follows
his dead friend, Proctor, at some distance behind. As night comes, the
figure seems to wave its rigid hand in the distance, and cry from its
icy throat, 'Cheer up, Mark, and good-by!'"

Here Carl stopped, rubbed his hands, shivered, and looked to see how his
visitor took the narrative.

"It's a pretty cold story," said Schwartz, "even in this broiling sun.
So he came down here to get a good, full warm, did he? He's got the
cash, I suppose, to pay for his fancies."

"I don't call that a fancy, exactly," said Carl, seating himself on the
hot white sand in the sunshine, with his thin hands clasped around his
knees. "As to cash--I don't know. He works very hard."

"He works because he likes it," said Schwartz, contemptuously; "he looks
like that sort of a man. But, at any rate, he don't make _you_ work
much!"

"He _is_ awfully good to me," admitted Carl.

"It isn't on account of your beauty."

"Oh, I'm good looking enough in my way," replied the youth. "I
acknowledge it isn't a common way; like yours, for instance." As he
spoke, he passed his hand through his thin light hair, drew the ends of
the long locks forward, and examined them admiringly.

"As he never saw you before, it couldn't have been brotherly love,"
pursued the other. "I suppose it was pity."

"No, it wasn't pity, either, you old blockhead," said Carl, laughing.
"He _likes_ to have me with him; he _likes_ me."

"I see that myself, and that's exactly the point. Why should he? You
haven't any inheritance to will to him, have you?"

"My violin, and the clothes on my back. I believe that's all," answered
Carl, lightly. He took off his palmetto hat, made a pillow of it, and
stretched himself out at full length, closing his eyes.

"Well, give _me_ a brother with cash, and I'll go to sleep, too," said
Schwartz. When Deal came home at sunset, the dark-skinned visitor was
gone.

But he came again; and this time stayed three days. Mark allowed it, for
Carl's sake. All he said was, "He can not be of much use in the
restaurant up the