Something within the clock's mechanism clicked and checked and went on again. The sound, quite unexpected, gave Mr. Lukisch a bad start. Could something have gone wrong with the combination? Suppose a premature release.... At that panic thought something within Mr. Lukisch's bad heart clicked and checked and did not go on again. The fear in his eyes faded and was succeeded by an expression of surprise and inquiry. Whether the inquiry was answered, nobody could have guessed from the still, unwinking regard on the face of the victim of heart failure. By and by a crowd gathered on the sidewalk, drawn by that mysterious instinct for sensation which attracts the casual and the idle. Two bold spirits entered the door and stood, hesitant, just inside, awed because the clock seemed so startlingly alive in that place. Some one sent upstairs for the landlord, who arrived to bemoan the unjust fates which had not only mulcted him of two months' rent with nothing to show for it but a rickety clock, but had also saddled him with a wholly superfluous corpse. He abused both indiscriminately, but chiefly the clock because it gave the effect of being sentient. So fervently did he curse it that Stepfather Time, repassing with Willy Woolly, heard him and entered. "And who"--the landlord addressed high Heaven with a gesture at once pious and pessimistic--"is to pay me fourteen dollars back rent this dirty beggar owes?" "The man," said Stepfather Time gently, "is dead." "He is." The landlord confirmed the unwelcome fact with objurgations. "Now must come the po-liss, the coroner, trouble, and expense. And what have I who run my property honest and respectable got to pay for it? Some rags and a bum clock." Willy Woolly sniffed at one protruding foot and growled. Dead or alive, this was not Willy Woolly's kind of man. "Now, now, Willy Woolly!" reproved his master. "Who are we that we should judge him?" "But I don't _like_ him," declared Willy Woolly in unequivocal dog language. "I think from his face that he has suffered much," said the gentle collector, wise in human pain. "Me; I suppose I don't suffer!" pointed out the landlord vehemently. "Fourteen dollars out. Two months' rent. A bum clock." He kicked the shabby case which whizzed and birred and struck five. The voice of its bell, measured and mellow and pure, was unquestionably D in alt. "My dear sir," said Stepfather Time urbanely, but quivering underneath his calm manner with the hot eagerness of the chase, "I will buy your clock." A gust of rough laughter passed through the crowd. The injurious word "nut" floated in the air, and was followed by "Verrichter." The landlord took thought and hope. "It is a very fine clock," he declared. "It is a bum clock," Stepfather Time reminded him mildly. "Stepnadel, the auctioneer, would pay me much money for it." "I will pay you much money for it." "How much?" "Seven dollars. That is one month's rent that he owed." "Two months' rent I must have."