"I ask you, man to man, ain't they mostly somebody's idea of what life
is?"

"I suppose that's a short way of putting it."

"And I ask you ag'in, what's better to take a secondhand hunch out of
what somebody else thinks life might be, or to go out and do some
living on your own hook?"

Cold Feet had been smiling faintly up to this point, as though he had
many things in reserve which might be said at need. Now his smile
disappeared.

"Perhaps you're right."

"And maybe I ain't." Sinclair brushed the entire argument away into a
thin mist of smoke. "Now, look here, Cold Feet, I'm about to go to
sleep, and when I sleep, I sure sleep sound, taking it by and large.
They's times when I don't more'n close one eye all night, and they's
times when you'd have to pull my eyes open, one by one, to wake me up.
Understand? I'm going to sleep the second way tonight. About eight
hours of the soundest sleep you ever heard tell of."

Jig considered him gravely.

"I'm afraid," he answered, "that I won't sleep nearly as well."

Riley Sinclair smiled. "Wouldn't be no ways nacheral for you to do much
sleeping," he agreed. "Take a gent that's in danger of having his neck
stretched, like you, and most generally he don't do much sleeping. He