“It fell from the table in my room.”
“How? Easily mended, isn't it?”
“I think I shall not play it soon again.”
Crailey swung his long legs off the sofa and abruptly sat upright. “What's this?” he asked gravely.
Tom pushed his papers away from him, rose and went to the dusty window that looked to the west, where, at the end of the long street, the sun was setting behind the ruin of charred timbers on the bank of the shining river.
“It seems that I played once too often,” he said.
Crailey was thoroughly astonished. He took a long, affectionate pull at the flask and offered it to his partner.
“No,” said Tom, turning to him with a troubled face, “and if I were you, I wouldn't either. These fishing trips of yours—”
“Fishing!” Crailey laughed. “Trips of a poetaster! It's then I write best, and write I will! There's a poem, and a damned good one, too, old preacher, in every gill of whiskey, and I'm the lad that can extract it! Lord! what's better than to be out in the open, all by yourself in the woods, or on the river? Think of the long nights alone with the glory of heaven and a good demijohn. Why, a man's thoughts are like actors performing in the air and all the crowding stars for audience! You know in your soul you'd rather have me out there, going it all by myself, than raising thunder over town. And you know, too, it doesn't tell on me; it doesn't show! You couldn't guess, to save your life, how much I've had to-day, now, could you?”
“Yes,” returned the other, “I could.”