All was done in silence and in silence, with Alonzo Berners slung over my shoulder, I walked to the door and to West Madison Street where there were lights and people passing up and down. At the corner I put him down and looking back saw the bartender standing at the door of his establishment watching. Was he laughing? I fancied he was. And one might also fancy he was keeping the others bluffed in the room until I had got safely away. I stood at the corner beside the sick man, who leaned helplessly against my legs, and waited for a cab that would take me to a railroad station. Already I had taken letters from his pocket and knew where he lived. He seemed unable to speak. “He will probably die on the way and then I’ll be in a hell of a mess,” I kept saying to myself after I had got with him into the day coach of a train. NOTE XIII MY adventure with Alonzo Berners came to an end after I had been at his house for a week and during the week nothing I can set down as notable happened at all and later I was told he was dead, that he had again got drunk in the city of Chicago and had fallen or had been knocked off a bridge into the Chicago River where he drowned. There was the house on the hillside and the garden. During my visit to the house the elder Berners worked in the garden or sat with me boasting of the horse Peter Point and found in me a sympathetic audience. I have always understood horses better than men. It’s easier. I sat in the garden listening to the talk of the men who came to see Alonzo Berners, rode with him once in his buggy or went into town to walk by myself or to listen to some tale told by the sailor who managed the store. The sister, who on the night of my arrival had treated me coldly--no doubt strange characters had come to the Berners house on the same mission that had brought me and also no doubt she was in terrible fear when Alonzo was away on one of his helpless debauches--the sister later treated me with the silent kindliness characteristic of her. Nothing happened at all during my visit and Alonzo Berners did not during the whole time say a notable thing that I could later remember and that I can now quote to explain my feeling for him. Nothing happened but that I was puzzled as I had never been before. There was something in the very walls of the Berners house that excited and when I had gone to bed at night I did not sleep. Notions came. Odd exciting fancies kept me awake. As I have explained I was then young and had quite made up my mind about men and life. Men and women were divided into two classes containing a few shrewd wise people and many fools. I was trying very hard to place myself among the wise and shrewd ones. The Berners family I could not place in either of these classifications and in particular Alonzo Berners puzzled and disconcerted me.