E-text prepared by Eric Eldred
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1921
Copyright, 1921
by
Ben Hecht
Printed in the United States of America
An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chairhe looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown smallwith age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden underhis beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a smile onhis face.
He sat in the dark, a patient, trembling figure waiting for bedtime. Hisfeet, though he rested them all day, grew heavy at night. Of late thisweariness had increased. It reached like a caress into his mind.Thoughts no longer formed themselves in the silences of his hours.Instead, a gentle sleep, dreamless and dark, came upon him and left himsitting with his little eyes, open and moist, fastened without sightupon familiar objects.
As he sat, the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always moremotionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his twig-likehands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers crawlingvaguely about like the legs of 8 long-impaled spiders.
The sound of a piano from the room behind him dropped into the old man'ssleep, and he found[Pg 4] himself once more looking out of his eyes andoccupying his clothes. His attitude remai