“Come out into the garden, my son, and feel that you are good and plenty alive.  Come out into the free air.  Hold on tight, a little while longer!”

I laid my hand upon his shoulder compellingly, and although he glared at me, and ground his teeth, and lifted his lip, he came; unwillingly, swearing under his breath, he came.  We tramped up and down the garden paths, up and down, and back again, his wooden peg making a round hole, like a hoofmark, in the earth.  He stared down at it, spat savagely upon it, and swore horribly, but not too loudly.

“I want to feel like a live man!” he gritted.  “A live man, not a one-legged mucker with a beard like a Dutch bomb-thrower’s, puttering about a skypilot’s backyard on the wrong side of everything!”

“Stick it out a little longer, John Flint; hold fast!”

“Hold fast to what?” he demanded savagely.  “To a bug stuck on a needle?”

“Yes.  And to me who trusts you.  To Madame who likes you.  To the dear child who put bug and needle into your hand because she knew it was good work and trusted your hand to do it.  And more than all, to that other Me you’re finding—­your own true self, John Flint!  Hold fast, hold fast!”

He stopped and stared at me.

“I’m believing him again!” said he, grievously.  “I’ve been sat on while I was hot, and my number’s marked on me, 23.  I’m hoodooed, that’s what!”

Tramp, tramp, stump, stump, up and down, the two of us.

“All right, devil-dodger,” said he wearily, after a long sullen silence.  “I’ll stick it out a bit longer, to please you.  You’ve been white—­the lot of you.  But look here—­if I beat it some night ... with what I can find, why, I’m warning you:  don’t blame me—­you’re running your risks, and it’ll be up to you to explain!”

“When you want to go, John Flint—­when you really and truly want to go, why, take anything I have that you may fancy, my son.  I give it you beforehand.”

“I don’t want anything given to me beforehand!” he growled.  “I want to take what I want to take without anybody’s leave!”

“Very well, then; take what you want to take, without anybody’s leave!  I shall be able to do without it, I dare say.”

He turned upon me furiously: 

“Oh, yes, I guess you can!  You’d do without eating and breathing too, I suppose, if you could manage it!  You do without too blamed much right now, trying to beat yourself to being a saint!  Of course I’d help myself and leave you to go without—­you’re enough to make a man ache to shoot some sense into you with a cannon!  And for God’s sake, who are you pinching and scraping and going without for?  A bunch of hickey factory-shuckers that haven’t got sense enough to talk American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on ’em like bone buttons!  They ain’t worth it.  While I’m in the humor, take it from me there ain’t anybody worth anything anyhow!”