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Dan walked to the window, looked out at the lessening storm, then at the tiny alarm-clock on the cupboard. "Be over pretty soon now!" He seated himself by the table, dropped his head wearily forward on folded arms and was asleep. The traveller's face had lost some of its shrewdness. It was as if the white frontier had seized and shaken him into a new conception of life.
On the chair beside his head he had placed his old-fashioned hunting-case watch, as big as an alarm-clock, the kind a railroad man would wind up with a spike-maul. Beside the watch he had laid his huge revolver in its worn leather scabbard.
But even he, oftener than not, comes moist-handed, and in a ready-tied tie. As if that matters, and yet somehow, it does. Leander wore none, or had he, would have worn it flowing. Then bed, and the routine of its unfolding and coaxing the pillow from beneath the iron clamp. An alarm-clock crashing through the stuff of dreams. Coffee within reach of the range.
Once somebody got up and closed a window. I could hear two distant snorings in major and minor keys. I managed to snatch a few winks and then an alarm-clock went off. At no great distance the scrubbing maid was getting up. I could hear her every move. The sun also rose and threw fire-pointed darts at us through the windowshades.
Tucked in the brown army blankets, which at first sight look so hard and so prickly, we slumbered, the twenty-one of us, as one man; until, with a cruel jolt, at 5.15 that wretched alarm-clock crashed forth its summons for the fastidious few who liked to rise in ample time to bath and shave before early parade.
But Balzac was not staying at Sache for the purpose of playing checkers, and in the same notice M. Salmon tells of his habits of work, on the strength of an account given by M. de Margonne: "He had a big alarm-clock," he writes, "for he slept very well and very soundly, and he set the alarm for two o'clock in the morning.
He handed the officer the package containing the alarm-clock. "That I have," answered the gratified Brownson. "Keep close eye on Grenelli, Officer Smith, and I may be able to overlook your shortcomings of this morning. I say, Mr. Indiman, but there's a regular miracle in this 'ere business. Now, how do you suppose this blessed little twopenny box ever come through an earthquake like that there."
Later on, it was mentioned, in connection with the touching incident, that the alarm-clock had been bought and delivered to the boy's mother, who appeared to be quite overcome with gratitude. It was learned, also, from another source, that the last assertion was greatly exaggerated.
"Yes?" she said sleepily, looking mechanically for her alarm-clock as she switched on the light. "What is it, please?" "It's I, Wallis, Mr. Allan's man, Madame," said a nervous voice. "Mr. Allan's very bad. I've done all the usual things, but nothing seems to quiet him. He hates doctors so, and they make him so wrought up please could you come, ma'am?
But when at last he heard the alarm-clock spring its rattle in the lower story, and the servants begin to be about, he instantly lost heart, and fled to his own room, where he threw himself upon the bed. Shortly after breakfast, at which he assisted with a highly tragical countenance, John sought his father where he used to sit, presumably in religious meditation, on the Sabbath mornings.
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