He turned with a certain dignity. “I sha’n’t want no things.” He added, however, “Ye do mean me to get out, Slim?” I didn’t—but I didn’t want to tell him so. Fury had cooled down without leaving me ready to retract what I had said. I meant to go after him—when he had got as far as the lift—but I meant, too, that he should take those few bleeding steps of anguish. He took them—not to the lift, but out into the vestibule. Then I heard a faint moan; then a sound as if something broke; and then a soft tumbling to the floor. When I got out he was lying all in a little huddled, senseless heap, with a cut on his forehead where he had struck the key or the door-knob as he fell. It was more than an hour before Cantyre got him back to consciousness; but it was early morning before he spoke. We had stayed with him through the night, as he had shown all the signs of passing out. His recovery of speech somewhere about dawn came as a surprise to us. To Cantyre I had given but the slightest explanation of the accident, being sure, however, that he guessed at what I didn’t say. “Told him to get to the dickens out of this, and he was taking me at my word. Never meant to let him get farther than the lift. Just wanted to scare him. Sorry now.” But Lovey’s account was different. About seven in the morning there came a streak of wan light down the shaft into which the window of his room looked out. Cantyre murmured something about going back to his own place for a bath. “All right,” I agreed, “and you’d better get your breakfast. When you come back I can do the same. You will come back, won’t you?” “Oh, of course! I sha’n’t be gone more than an hour. When he wakes again give him another teaspoonful of this; but don’t worry him unless he wakes.” And just then Lovey woke. He woke with a dim smile, as a young child wakes. He smiled at Cantyre first, and then, rolling his soft blue eyes to the other side of the bed, he smiled at me. “What’s up, Slim?” he asked, feebly. “I ain’t sick, am I?” “No, Lovey, old son, you’re not sick; you’ve only had a bit of a fall.” And then it came back to him. “Oh yes. I know. Served me right, didn’t it?” Rolling his eyes now toward Cantyre, he continued: “I was just a-frightenin’ of Slim, like. Kind o’ foolish, I was. Said I was goin’ to leave him. Didn’t mean to go no farther nor the lift.” “I didn’t mean to let you go, Lovey,” I groaned, humbly. “Of course you didn’t! ’Ow ’uld ye get along without me, I’d like to know? Didn’t I keep ye straight all them weeks at the Down and Out?” “You did, Lovey.” “And ’aven’t I saved ye lots o’ times since?” “You have, old man.” “I wouldn’t leave ye, not for nothink, Slim. We’re buddies as long as we live, ain’t we? Didn’t ye say that to me yerself?” “I did, and I’ll say it again.” “Well then, what’s the use o’ talkin’? You mustn’t mind me, sonny. I may get into a bad temper and speak ’arsh to you; but I don’t mean nothink by it. I wouldn’t leave ye, not for—”