“Oh, he said a lot of things; but that’s all I remember––what I told you. It was the last thing, and he kind of tilted back in his chair. The spring needed oil; it fairly screamed. I can hear it now.
“‘Steve Babcock,’ said he, ‘you’ve got to go some place where it’s drier, where the air’s pure and clean and sweet the year round. Mexico’s the spot for you, or somewhere in the Far West where you can spend all your time in the open––under the roof of Heaven.’
“He leaned forward, and again that cursed spring interrupted.
“‘If you don’t go, and go right away,’ he said, ‘as sure as I’m talking to you, you’re a dead man.’” 243
Babcock straightened, and, leaden-eyed, looked dully into the blaze.
“Those,” he whispered, “were his last words.”
“And if you do go?”––very quietly.
“He said I had a chance––a fighting chance.” Once more the hopeless, deprecatory gesture.
“But what’s the use? You know, as well as I, that I haven’t a hundred dollars to my name. He might just as well have told me to go to the moon.
“We poor folks are like rats in a trap when they turn the water on––helpless. We––”