“To-day as the sun declines.”
And the moment after he disappeared, leaving the startled miser to gaze, with greedy contemplation, upon the sapphire which he retained in his grasp.
(To be continued on Dickey No. 3.)
“Oh, ho!” exclaimed Dennis as the exasperating phrase in italics met his glance, “an’ it’s here you are again. Shure, a man would tear his shirt to tatters for a tale like that,” and with appreciative meditation over the vexatious quandary presented by the cunning of the bosom-maker in thus adding another ruinous possibility to the inevitable soil and wear, he added:
“Shure, the man who put that sthory on the dickey-back knew his business. Where the dirt laves off the guessin’ begins, and betwixt the two it’s another dickey I’ll be after—ah, ha, an’ it’s a fine thing to have brains like that.”
With this discerning tribute, Dennis turned the last dickey around and discovered that it was protected in the rear with a sort of oiled paper, through which the story shadowed dimly.
Here was the pinch of his dilemma.
His curiosity was sharpened and his judgment impaired.
In a variety of ways literature incapacitates a man for the exigencies of existence.