because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows
bring good fortune."

The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for
them, but that night a real King died in Europe, and demanded an
obituary notice.

The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and
again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed
again. The daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third
summer there fell a hot night, a night issue, and a strained waiting
for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world,
exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the
past two years, the machines worked with more clatter, and some
of the trees in the office garden were a few feet taller. But that was
all the difference.

I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene
as I have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than
it had been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At
three o'clock I cried, "Print off," and turned to go, when there crept
to my chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his
head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one
over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or
crawled--this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by
name, crying that he was come back. "Can you give me a drink?"
he whimpered. "For the Lord's sake, give me a drink!"

I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain,
and I turned up the lamp.