The two walked slowly toward the yellow road. Pietro raised his voice despairingly. “No cent! Not a nicka!” “That's so,” said Tom, pausing. “Five, by thunder! Come along, Dago. It's free quarters. Entrez. Take a seat.” The breeze was blowing up over Elbow Lake, and the butterflies bobbed about in the sunshine, as they drove along the yellow road. Pietro sat at the back of the buck-board, the leathery ape on his knee and a smile on his face, broad, non-professional, and consisting largely of front teeth. CONLON CONLON, the strong, lay sick unto death with fever. The Water Commissioners sent champagne to express their sympathy. It was an unforced impulse of feeling. But Conlon knew nothing of it. His lips were white, his cheeks sunken; his eyes glared and wandered; he muttered, and clutched with his big fingers at nothing visible. The doctor worked all day to force a perspiration. At six o'clock he said: “I'm done. Send for the priest.” When Kelly and Simon Harding came, Father Ryan and the doctor were going down the steps. “'Tis a solemn duty ye have, Kelly,” said the priest, “to watch the last moments of a dying man, now made ready for his end.” “Ah, not Conlon! He'll not give up, not him,” cried Kelly, “the shtrong man wid the will in him!” “An' what's the sthrength of man in the hands of his Creathor?” said the priest, turning to Harding, oratorically. “I don' know,” said Harding, calmly. “Do you?” “'Tis naught!” Kelly murmured submissively. “Kind of monarchical institution, ain't it, what Conlon's run up against?” Harding remarked. “Give him a fair show in a caucus, an' he'd win, sure.” “He'll die if he don't sweat,” said the doctor, wiping his forehead. “It's hot enough.” Conlon lay muttering and glaring at the ceiling. The big knuckles of his hands stood out like rope-knots. His wife nodded to Kelly and Harding, and went out. She was a good-looking woman, large, massive, muscular. Kelly looked after her, rubbing his short nose and blinking his watery eyes. He was small, with stooping shoulders, affectionate eyes, wavering knees. He had followed Conlon, the strong, and served him many years. Admiration of Conlon was a strenuous business in which to be engaged. “Ah!” he said, “his wife ten year, an' me his inchimate friend.” It was ten by the clock. The subsiding noise of the city came up over housetops and vacant lots. The windows of the sickroom looked off the verge of a bluff; one saw the lights of the little city below, the lights of the stars above, and the hot black night between.