noisy and boisterous.  Little by little Ellis himself commenced to lose his self-control.  By and by he and Vandover began to sing, each independent of the other, very hoarse and loud.  The Dummy joined them, making a hideous and lamentable noise which so affected Ellis that he pretended to howl at it like a little dog overcome by mournful music.  But suddenly Ellis had an idea, crying out thickly, between two hiccoughs: 

“Hey, there, Van, do your dog-act for us!  Go on!  Bark for us!”

By this time Vandover was very nearly out of his head, his drunkenness finishing what his nervousness had begun.  The attack was fast approaching culmination; strange and unnatural fancies began to come and go in his brain.

“Go on, Van!” urged Ellis, his eyes heavy with alcohol.  “Go on, do your dog-act!”

All at once it was as though an angry dog were snarling and barking over a bone there under the table about their feet.  Ellis roared with laughter, but suddenly he himself was drunk.  All the afternoon he had kept himself in hand; now his intoxication came upon him in a moment.  The skin around his eyes was purple and swollen, the pupils themselves were contracted; they grew darker, taking on the colour of bitumen.  Suddenly he swept glasses, plates, castor, knives, forks, and all from off the table with a single movement of his arm.  Then the alcohol overcame him all in an instant like a poisonous gas.  He swayed forward in his chair and fell across the stripped table, his head rolling inertly between his outstretched arms.  He did not move again.

In a neighbouring room young Haight had been dining with some college fellows, fraternity men, all friends of his, upon whose coach he had ridden to and from the game.  He had heard Vandover and Ellis in the room across the hall and had recognized their voices.  Haight had never been a friend of Ellis, but no one, not even Turner, had grieved more over Vandover’s ruin than had his old-time college chum.

Young Haight heard the noise of the falling crockery as Ellis swept the table clear, and turned his head sharply, listening.  There was a moment’s silence after this, and Haight, fearing some accident had happened, stepped out into the hall and stood there a moment listening again; his head inclined toward the closed door.  He heard no groaning, no exclamations of pain, not even any noise of conversation; only through the closed door came a steady sound of barking.

Puzzled, he tried the door and, finding it locked, as he had expected, put one foot upon the knob and, catching hold of the top jamb, raised himself up and looked down through the open space that answered for a transom.

The room was very warm, the air thick with the smell of cooked food, the fumes of whisky, and the acrid odour of cigar smoke.  Ellis had rolled from his chair and lay upon the floor sprawling on his face in the wreck of the table.  Near to him, likewise upon the floor, but sitting up, his back against the wall, was the Dummy.  He was muttering incessantly to himself, as if delighted at having found his tongue, his head swaying on his shoulders, and a strange murmur, soft, birdlike, meaningless, like sounds heard from a vast distance, coming from his wide-open mouth.