When your songs for me shall be songs that are finished, When voices shall have left me beyond my retrieving, When the key shall be turned and my broad world diminished, A dream of the cricket’s song shall save me from grieving. The long locks of the willow-tree are sloped at one angle, Are swung to one wind, and that wind can awaken The crickets to their chanting and the fireflies to spangle The long locks of the willow-trees, shimmering and shaken. There are dragons in the sky, and the horned moon is a rider, The horned moon goes riding through gates that break asunder. Stand wide, O ye gates, for the challenger, stand wider, He goes challenging the dragons, the dragons and the thunder. I am holding, I am hoarding these songs by the million, For singers grow very wise but hearers grow wiser, And a thin flute in the dimness of a dragon-decked pavilion Plays only for my treasuring, for the treasuring of a miser. When the key shall have turned on me, the silence disarmed me, And gates at my challenging swing no more asunder, Not mortally—not mortally my enemy shall have harmed me, For I have heard the crickets’ songs and the thin flutes and the thunder. In the evening Edward met Stone Ponting in the corridor. The boy looked pale and hysterical. “I bin out with Doc. He’s bin setting me up cocktails. Some drink I’ll say. I’ve had cocktails before, though—a boy and me knoo a man in Sacramento ... the other feller had a Buick.... I ain’t no sneezing innocent, believe me....” Edward followed him into his room. “I’ll say I’d be kinda lonesome here, without Doc—him and me’s buddies. Emerly was a sport, I’ll tell the world. Her and me raised hell in this one-horse city. My, we made ona these Chink traffic cops mad one day, having ricksha races.... Doc’s a piker. I didn’t feel but a little queer after that cocktail and now he says he’ll never buy me another. I tell you I ain’t no snivelling kid—he’s a piker—I feel queer now and no mistake.” He was very sick. Then he began to cry. Edward sat on the edge of the bed and patted the prostrate boy’s knee awkwardly. All the time Edward was thinking, “This boy’s going to depend on me absolutely within a few hours. A thousand dollars.... Besides, it’s my duty to look after him. Melsie’s a friend of mine....”