Jack could not see so well with one eye as he could with the other. A cataract was there which gave that eye the appearance of a milky-coloured, poached egg....
Coming home from Buffalo one evening, he stepped down on the wrong side of the train, in the dusk ... perhaps from his eagerness to sit by his prophet at supper again that night—there being too long a line leaving at the station, ahead of him.
A freight was drawing out on the track opposite. And Gabby was so huge that he was rolled like a log in a jam, between the two moving trains ... when the freight had passed, he rose and walked. He took a cab to the Artwork Studios.
All in tatters, he hurried to his room and put on another suit. He appeared at supper by the side of the Master. He narrated what had happened, amid laughter and joking. When Spalton wanted to send for his old, frail, white-headed father, the elder Spalton, who was the community doctor, Jack waved the idea aside.
"Oh, no, Master!" (Master he called Spalton, and never the familiar, more democratic John) "Oh, no, I'm all right."...
The next morning Jack did not show up for breakfast.
At ten o'clock Spalton, solicitous, went up to his room....
He shouted for help. He had found his disciple there, huge and dead, like a stranded sea-thing.
In Gabby Jack's will ... for they found one, together with a last word and testament for humanity,—it was asked of Spalton that he should conduct the funeral from the Chapel ... and read the funeral oration, written by the deceased himself ... and add, if the Master felt moved, a few words thereto of his own ... if he considered that so mean a disciple deserved it.