“I’ll never leave my Dan—­never!” declared Mamie, when it was suggested that she should return to the parlour.

“Jimmie, dear,” sobbed Edna, “if you’ll promise me not to die, I’ll never speak to Mr. Greenberg again!”

* * * * *

At about six the next morning Pete Holloway woke up.  He opened his eyes, groaned deeply, and closed them again.

“How are you feeling, Pete?” said I.

Pete groaned again, for memory of all that had passed came to him.  With a tremendous effort he said—­

“I’m dyin’!”

And he looked it.

In Miss Parkinson’s bower, Jimmie Barker was saying faintly:  “Kiss me good-bye, Edna; the hour has come!”

Shortly before, Mamie had whispered to Dan:  “Darling, can you forgive me?” And he had replied fervently:  “Mame, if Jack Rice kin make you happy, you take him.”

Greiffenhagen had tried to administer more medicine.  The boys refused to touch it.  Pete expressed the feelings of the others when he muttered:  “I ain’t goin’ to cross the Jordan drunk!”

It seemed to me that the three men were sinking.  Mrs. Greiffenhagen, an impassioned pessimist, was of opinion that they couldn’t last another hour!

At nine, when our nerves had been strained to breaking-point, Ajax and a big-bearded stranger galloped up to Greiffenhagen’s house.

“It’s Doc.  Elkins, of San Lorenzy,” said a hired man.

“The boys are sinking!” sobbed Mrs. Greiffenhagen.  “Where is the Professor?”

“I left him in San Lorenzo.”

Elkins and Ajax rushed upstairs and into the Greiffenhagen bedroom.  Elkins glanced at Pete, felt his pulse, and then said deliberately—­

“My man, you’re dying of sheer funk!  You’ve poisoned yourself with nothing more deadly than good Kentucky whisky!  In six hours you’ll be perfectly well again.”

Pete heard, and pulled himself together.  It struck him that this was not the first time that he had felt nearly dead after imbibing much whisky.

“But the Perfessor?” he asked feebly.

“Professor Adam Chawner,” said Elkins in a clear voice, “is in a strait-waistcoat at the County Hospital.  He will get over this, but not so quickly as you will.  He is quite mad for the moment about a deadly microbe which only exists in his imagination.”

The partitions in most Californian houses are indecently thin.  As Elkins’s voice died away—­and Pete said afterwards it was like a strain of heavenly music—­a feeble cheer was heard from the chamber usually occupied by Miss Mary Willing.

“Jimmie,” cried Dan, “air you dead yet?”

“Not quite,” came an attenuated whisper from the other side of the passage.

“We’ll live to be married, old socks,” continued Dan in a robuster voice, “but I’ve got the worst dose o’ prickly heat you ever saw.”

The following day our three friends were riding the range.  Six months afterwards, Professor Adam Chawner resumed his work at the Smithsonian Institute.