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Each moment he had expected to be bitten, but somehow they all tumbled together unhurt into Lawler's pantry, where they found that factotum standing grim and wire-strung with anticipation. Beyond the pantry were the dogs' night quarters, and they were quickly driven into them and shut up. But they still bounded and beat against the door, and presently began to howl a vain chorale.
This hint set him on the right track. The regiments of Maäsau, though few in number, carried splendid traditions. Their ranks were drawn from a stolid, silent peasantry, and officered by a wire-strung, high tempered aristocracy, born of a mixed race, it is true, but none the less frantically devoted to the freedom and independence of their shred of a fatherland.
No doubt if the old opera-house were ever cleaned out, just such a heap of stiff, wire-strung bones would be found, in some such hole as the dugazon's dressing-room, desiccating away in its last costume perhaps in that very costume of Inez; and if one were venturesome enough to pass Allhallowe'en there, the spirit of those bones might be seen availing itself of the privilege of unasperged corpses to roam.
He had lived for the day, and the day only; he had got to the lowest peg on the medical scale; and any change would be an improvement. He carried with him an incomplete case of instruments, a wire-strung banjo, and a fine taste in liquor and merriment as stock-in-trade, and if any of the many shapes which Death assumes in the Congo region came his way, why there he was ready to journey on.
One ear was forward as if he did not know what lay in store for him, but would try to be on the alert. One ear flagged warily back. He went slowly, lifting his feet with the care of a very weary horse. Yet, when the wind fluttered a gust of whirling leaves beside him, he leaped aside and stood with high head, staring, transformed in the instant into a creature of fire and wire-strung nerves.
He climbed a hill and came plump upon a fence, wire-strung, wire-stayed, aggressively barring his way. "Dilly's about the most thorough-minded man I ever met up with," he mused, half annoyed, stopping a moment to survey critically the barrier. "Yuh never find a job uh hisn left with any loose ends a-dangling. He's got a fence here like he was guarding a railroad right-uh-way.
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