“But he was past jokin’.  You never see a man so shook up by the nightmare as he was by that one.  He kept goin’ over it and tellin’ how natural old Kelly looked and how many times he said ‘Seventeen’ to him.

“‘Now what did he mean by it?’ he says.  ’Don’t tell me that was a common dream, ’cause twa’n’t.  No, sir, ’twas a vision sent to me, and I know it.  But what did he mean?’

“‘I think he meant you was seventeen kinds of an idiot,’ I snorts, disgusted.  ‘Get up off that bed and stop wavin’ your arms, will you?  He didn’t mean for you to turn yourself into a windmill, that’s sartin sure.’

“Then he hits his knee a slap that sounds like a window blind blowin’ to.  ‘I’ve got it!’ he sings out.  ’He meant for me to go to number seventeen on that street.  That’s what he meant.’

“I laughed and made fun of him, but I might as well have saved my breath.  He was sure Pat Kelly’s ghost had come hikin’ back from the hereafter to tell him to go to 17 Blank Street and find his boy.  ’Else why was he on Blank Street?’ he says.  ‘You tell me that.’

“I couldn’t tell him.  It’s enough for me to figger out what makes live folks act the way they do, let alone dead ones.  And Cap’n Jonadab was a Spiritu’list on his mother’s side.  It ended by my agreein’ to give the Jimmie chase one more try.

“‘But it’s got to be the last,’ I says.  ’When you get to number seventeen don’t you say you think the old man meant to say “seventy” and stuttered.’

“Number 17 Blank Street was a little combination fruit and paper store run by an Eyetalian with curly hair and the complexion of a molasses cooky.  His talk sounded as if it had been run through a meat chopper.  All he could say was, ’Nica grape, genta’men?  On’y fifteen cent a pound.  Nica grape?  Nica apple?  Nica pear?  Nica ploom?’

“‘Kelly?’ says Jonadab, hollerin’ as usual.  ’Kelly! d’ye understand?  K-E-L-Kel L-Y-ly, Kelly.  You know, Kelly!  We want to find him.’

“And just then up steps a feller about six feet high and three foot through.  He was dressed in checkerboard clothes, some gone to seed, and you could hardly see the blue tie he had on for the glass di’mond in it.  Oh, he was a little wilted now—­for the lack of water, I judge—­but ’twas plain that he’d been a sunflower in his time.  He’d just come out of a liquor store next door to the fruit shop and was wipin’ his mouth with the back of his hand.

“‘What’s this I hear?’ says he, fetchin’ Jonadab a welt on the back like a mast goin’ by the board.  ‘Is it me friend Kelly you’re lookin’ for?’

“I was just goin’ to tell him no, not likin’ his looks, but Jonadab cut in ahead of me, out of breath from the earthquake the feller had landed him, but excited as could be.

“‘Yes, yes!’ says he.  ‘It’s Mr. Kelly we want.  Do you know him?’

“’Do I know him?  Why, me bucko, ’tis me old college chum he is.  Come on with me and we’ll give him the glad hand.’