"Wilkins or anybody else; I don't want any help with a bath. I know how to take a bath, at least. I don't know how you swells take yours, but I take mine alone; I don't want any one pottering around me, and I won't have it!" His countenance flushed angrily, and Anthony favored him with an indulgent smile. After all, he was very young. "As you please, David. Show him to the north bathroom, Wilkins. That is all." But he tapped Wilkins's shoulder and held him back a moment to add: "And get his wretched togs, Wilkins. I'll dress him properly to-morrow; but get those rags away from him." "Very good, sir," said Wilkins, as he glided down the corridor after David. The proprietor of Fry's Imperial Liniment watched him go and smiled softly, returning to his chair to grin at Johnson Boller in a perfectly human fashion. Johnson Boller, on the other hand, did not grin at all. He merely gazed at his old friend until, after a minute or two, Anthony asked: "Well--what do you think?" "I think you're a nut!" Johnson Boller said with sweet candor. "I think you're a plain da--well, I think you're unbalanced. You know what that young thug will do to you, don't you?" "Eh?" "If he's the crook he looks, he'll light out of here about three in the morning with everything but the piano and your encyclopædia. If he isn't a crook, just as soon as he gets loose and talks it over with his friends, he'll have you pinched for detaining him here against his will; and I'll give you ten to one that he collects not less than twenty-five hundred dollars before he's through. You scared him stiff with your eagle eye and your crazy notions, and he pleaded guilty so he could go to bed and get away from you. I'll have to testify to that if he calls on me." "Fiddlesticks!" said Anthony Fry. "Is it? Wait and see, Anthony," Johnson Boller said earnestly. "That kid spells trouble. I can feel it in the air." "You can always feel it in the air," Anthony smiled. "Maybe so; but this feeling amounts to a pain!" Boller said warmly. "This is a hunch--a premonition--one of those prophetic aches that can't be ignored. Why, he had a fight started before you had spoken ten words to him, and----" "Oh, rot!" Anthony said. Johnson Boller drew a deep, concerned breath. "On the level," he said, "are you going to keep this kid imprisoned here?" "By no means," Anthony laughed. "As a matter of fact, all I want to do is to talk to him in the morning. I want to know, Johnson, whether he will actually persist in fighting off the chance I'm offering him--because it's so confounded characteristic of the whole human race. If he's as obstinate in the morning as he is now--well, I suppose I'll turn him loose with a ten-dollar bill, and look around for another subject. I'd really like to approach a dozen men, picked haphazard, and write a little paper on the manner in which they greet opportunity."