By and by it got real black, and we were hungry, and we didn’t have no fire.  You see, they don’t let feebs carry matches, and all we could do was just shiver.  And we’d never thought about being hungry.  You see, feebs always have their food ready for them, and that’s why it’s better to be a feeb than earning your living in the world.

And worse than everything was the quiet.  There was only one thing worse, and it was the noises.  There was all kinds of noises every once in a while, with quiet spells in between.  I reckon they were rabbits, but they made noises in the brush like wild animals—­you know, rustle rustle, thump, bump, crackle crackle, just like that.  First Charley got a fit, a real one, and Joe threw a terrible one.  I don’t mind fits in the Home with everybody around.  But out in the woods on a dark night is different.  You listen to me, and never go hunting gold mines with epilecs, even if they are high-grade.

I never had such an awful night.  When Joe and Charley weren’t throwing fits they were making believe, and in the darkness the shivers from the cold which I couldn’t see seemed like fits, too.  And I shivered so hard I thought I was getting fits myself.  And little Albert, with nothing to eat, just drooled and drooled.  I never seen him as bad as that before.  Why, he twisted that left eye of his until it ought to have dropped out.  I couldn’t see it, but I could tell from the movements he made.  And Joe just lay and cussed and cussed, and Charley cried and wished he was back in the Home.

We didn’t die, and next morning we went right back the way we’d come.  And little Albert got awful heavy.  Doctor Wilson was mad as could be, and said I was the worst feeb in the institution, along with Joe and Charley.  But Miss Striker, who was a nurse in the drooling ward then, just put her arms around me and cried, she was that happy I’d got back.  I thought right there that mebbe I’d marry her.  But only a month afterward she got married to the plumber that came up from the city to fix the gutter-pipes of the new hospital.  And little Albert never twisted his eye for two days, it was that tired.

Next time I run away I’m going right over that mountain.  But I ain’t going to take epilecs along.  They ain’t never cured, and when they get scared or excited they throw fits to beat the band.  But I’ll take little Albert.  Somehow I can’t get along without him.  And anyway, I ain’t going to run away.  The drooling ward’s a better snap than gold mines, and I hear there’s a new nurse coming.  Besides, little Albert’s bigger than I am now, and I could never carry him over a mountain.  And he’s growing bigger every day.  It’s astonishing.

THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY

He lay on his back.  So heavy was his sleep that the stamp of hoofs and cries of the drivers from the bridge that crossed the creek did not rouse him.  Wagon after wagon, loaded high with grapes, passed the bridge on the way up the valley to the winery, and the coming of each wagon was like an explosion of sound and commotion in the lazy quiet of the afternoon.