money in business property, and to spend his time seated in an easy creaking chair before the fire department, in incessant gossip about baseball with the firemen and the young professional baseball players whose chief support he was, whose annual deficit he cheerfully supplied, and to whom he had given the local baseball park, which bore his name. He had been one of Gant’s best friends for twenty years, he was immensely fond of him, and now, assembled in the broad front hall in earnest discussion with the Pentlands and Mike Fogarty, another of Gant’s friends, and armed with the invariable cigar (despite his doctor’s orders he smoked thirty or forty strong black cigars every day), which he chewed on, took out of his mouth, and put back again, with quick, short, unconscious movements, he could be heard saying in the rapid, earnest, stammering tone that was one of the most attractive qualities of his buoyant and constantly hopeful nature:
“I-I-I-I just believe he’s going to pull right out of this and-and-and-get well! Why-why-why-why-when I went in there tonight he spoke right up and-and-and knew me right away!” he blurted out, sticking the cigar in his mouth and chewing on it vigorously a moment—“why-why-why his mind is-is-is-is just as clear—as it always was—spoke right up, you know, says’Sit down, Fagg’—shook hands with me—knew me right away—talked to me just the same way he always talked—says’Sit down, Fagg. I’m glad to see you. How have you been?’he says—and-and-and—I just believe he’s going to pull right out of this,” Mr. Sluder blurted out, —“be damned if I don’t—what do you say, Will?” and snatching his chewed cigar butt from his mouth he turned eagerly to Will Pentland for confirmation. And Will, who, as usual, had been paring his stubby nails during the whole course of the conversation, his lips pursed in their characteristic family grimace, now studied his clenched fingers for a moment, pocketed his knife and turning to Fagg Sluder, with a little birdlike nod and wink, and with the incomparable Pentland drawl, at once precise and full of the relish of self-satisfaction, said:
“Well, if any man alive can do it, W. O. is that man. I’ve seen him time and again when I thought every breath would be his last—and he’s got over it every time. I’ve always said,” he went on precisely, and with a kind of deadly directness in his small compact and almost wizened face, “that he has more real vitality than any two men that I ever knew—he’s got out of worse holes than this before—and he may do it again.” He was silent
