“You will excuse me, Chunk,” said Ikey.  “I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon.”

“Say,” said McGowan, looking up suddenly, “say, Ikey, ain’t there a drug of some kind—­some kind of powders that’ll make a girl like you better if you give ’em to her?”

Ikey’s lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued: 

“Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed ’em to his girl in soda water.  From the very first dose he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her.  They was married in less than two weeks.”

Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan.  A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires.  Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy’s territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.

“I thought,” went on Chunk hopefully, “that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip.  I guess she don’t need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases.  If the stuff’ll work just for a couple of hours it’ll do the trick.”

“When is this foolishness of running away to be happening?” asked Ikey.

“Nine o’clock,” said Mr. McGowan.  “Supper’s at seven.  At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache.  At nine old Parvenzano lets me through to his back yard, where there’s a board off Riddle’s fence, next door.  I go under her window and help her down the fire-escape.  We’ve got to make it early on the preacher’s account.  It’s all dead easy if Rosy don’t balk when the flag drops.  Can you fix me one of them powders, Ikey?”

Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly.

“Chunk,” said he, “it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness.  To you alone of my acquaintance would I intrust a powder like that.  But for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosy to think of you.”

Ikey went behind the prescription desk.  There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia.  To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper.  Taken by an adult this powder would insure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleeper.  This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinvar.

The subtlety of Ikey’s action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move.  He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosy.  Mr. Riddle was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action.

“Much obliged,” he said, briefly, to Ikey.  “The lazy Irish loafer!  My own room’s just above Rosy’s.  I’ll just go up there myself after supper and load the shot-gun and wait.  If he comes in my back yard he’ll go away in a ambulance instead of a bridal chaise.”