“Ten thousand furies!” he roared, as he chased around the room about twenty times, and broke the world’s record for the two-mile dash. “It’s another one! Where is the fiendish thing? Let me get my hands on it! Oh, I won’t do a thing to it!”
In the course of four or five minutes, he found it, hidden behind a picture. A tag was attached to it, and on the tag was written:
“You must be very, very tired.”
“Tired!” howled the big fellow. “I should say so! This is enough to make anybody tired!”
He dropped the clock to the floor, but it continued to rattle away. With an exclamation of anger, quite forgetting that his feet were not encased in boots, he drew off and kicked the clock up against the wall, with all his strength, breaking his great toe-nail, and knocking the skin off the two neighboring toes.
“Yow!” he howled, as he held onto his injured toes with both hands, and hopped around the room on the other foot. “Oh, my goodness! I’ve maimed myself for life! I’ll be a helpless cripple as long as I live!”
The clock gave a sort of derisive rattle, and stopped.
Bruce sat down on the edge of the bed, and examined his injured foot. After awhile, he bound up his toes with a handkerchief, and turned in again.
“I guess this is the end of it,” he decided. “They’ve spoiled my night’s rest! It’s an outrage!”
His nerves were not near the surface, so they soon became quiet, and, despite what had happened, despite the injury to his foot, he began to snore again. Then the fourth clock started out to get in its work. When Browning awoke, and realized what was taking place, he was wild. He made another jump, to get out of bed, caught his feet in the bedclothing again, and struck on his forehead and nose, barking the latter, and causing it to bleed slightly.