THE MISADVENTURES OF CASSIDY

BY EDWARD S. MOFFAT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY N.C. WYETH


Cassidy gazed long and blankly across the desert. "Wot a life!" he
muttered grimly. "Say, _wot_ a life this is!" Cassidy made the words
by putting his tongue against his set teeth and forcibly wrenching the
sounds out by the roots. The words had been a long time in the making,
but now, because of the infinite sourness of their birth and because
of the acrid grinding and gritting that had been going on in the dark
recesses of his soul, Cassidy was forced at last to listen. Rudely and
forever they dispelled Cassidy's dull impression that things were well
with Cassidy, and in so doing tore away the veil and revealed Truth
standing before him, naked, yet gloriously unashamed. But the general
outlines of the goddess had not been entirely unfamiliar to him.
Although his previous skull-gropings had brought forth neither a cause
nor a remedy, he had so long felt that things were far from
satisfactory that when at last she fronted him brazenly, eye to eye,
he only sighed heavily, spat twice in sad reflection, and----nodded
for her to pass on; she had been accepted.

"Gosh, wot a thirst I got!" he pondered, and kicked the empty canteen
at his feet. "Wot a simply horrible thirst! Say, pardner, I wonder did
a feller _ever_ have a thirst like this?" Luckily for Cassidy, his