To Ike's mind, this was the kitchen. His home, his place of retirement, should logically be back of this. Within him burned increasing fear. Upon self-examination, he discovered that peculiar symptoms beset every part of his body. Unquestionably the fatal hour approached. The time of paroxysms and fits was at hand. Trembling and almost blind from apprehension, the chauffeur circled the refreshments and the culinary argument. He came upon a shady nook. The tall brush had been pulled aside and fashioned into a rude canopy which, with the tree branches overhead, afforded a double protection from the sun. Within it, his confused eyes made out that which appeared a couch decked forth with old blankets and gunny sacks. Ike sank upon this with a moan of anguish and, with his kinky head buried in the crook of his elbow, awaited the final agony which would herald the passing of his soul. With that love for solitude and self-communion, so common to unusual minds, Mr. Quince had not mingled with the ladies. While technically a member of the picnic party, he was not one with it in spirit, in taste or in aspiration. Those who go down to the sea in ships give but little heed to infant culture. Therefore, he strolled about the circumference of the festivities instead of in their midst and thus came upon the recumbent Ike. "What's the matter now?" he demanded in the rough manner of a man hardened by contact with nature in her wildest moods. Ike emitted a dismal groan. Mr. Quince, ever one of action, promptly applied that treatment deemed peculiarly efficacious in the treatment of those intoxicated. He seized the negro by his shoulders and shook him violently. "Come up!" he roared. "Git a move on yer, yer lazy bum." "Lemme go!" protested Ike, astounded at the administration of such radical restorative measures to one about to shuffle off. "Ah'm er dead man. Ah'm er gwine to pass away." Mr. Quince registered intense interest. "Yer don't say?" He scratched his head reflectively and brought the cold light of reason to bear upon the problem. "Whatcher talkin' about," he went on in tones of regret. "Yer hain't dead"; and concluded more hopefully, "Leastways not yit." "He'p," moaned Ike, apparently in intense agony. Mr. Quince pensively spat a stream of tobacco juice across the bier of the dying one. "Maybe that doctor mought give yer some dope," he suggested, with great deliberation. Ike's answer was a sepulchral groan. Dr. Jackson, with the utmost possible composure was receiving from a group of mothers that feminine adulation usually accorded the members of his profession. Mr. Quince slowly approached them. "That black boy is er dying over there," he hailed, as an officer ex-changing casual greetings from his bridge with a passing ship.