"And who"--the landlord addressed high Heaven with a gesture at once
pious and pessimistic--"is to pay me fourteen dollars back rent this
dirty beggar owes?"

"The man," said Stepfather Time gently, "is dead."

"He is." The landlord confirmed the unwelcome fact with objurgations.
"Now must come the po-liss, the coroner, trouble, and expense. And what
have I who run my property honest and respectable got to pay for it?
Some rags and a bum clock."

Willy Woolly sniffed at one protruding foot and growled. Dead or alive,
this was not Willy Woolly's kind of man. "Now, now, Willy Woolly!"
reproved his master. "Who are we that we should judge him?"

"But I don't _like_ him," declared Willy Woolly in unequivocal dog
language.

"I think from his face that he has suffered much," said the gentle
collector, wise in human pain.

"Me; I suppose I don't suffer!" pointed out the landlord vehemently.
"Fourteen dollars out. Two months' rent. A bum clock."

He kicked the shabby case which whizzed and birred and struck five. The
voice of its bell, measured and mellow and pure, was unquestionably D
in alt.

"My dear sir," said Stepfather Time urbanely, but quivering underneath
his calm manner with the hot eagerness of the chase, "I will buy