ROBERTS: 'Don't you understand? When I went out I--didn't take my
watch--with me. I left it here on my bureau.'

WILLIS: 'Well?'

ROBERTS: 'Oh, merciful heavens! don't you see? Then I couldn't
have been robbed!'

WILLIS: 'Well, but whose watch did you take from the fellow that
didn't rob you, then?'

ROBERTS: 'His own!' He abandons himself powerlessly upon a chair.
'Yes; I left my own watch here, and when that person brushed against
me in the Common, I missed it for the first time. I supposed he had
robbed me, and ran after him, and--'

WILLIS: 'Robbed HIM!'

ROBERTS: 'Yes.'

WILLIS: 'Ah, ha, ha, ha! I, hi, hi, hi! O, ho, ho, ho!' He
yields to a series of these gusts and paroxysms, bowing up and down,
and stamping to and fro, and finally sits down exhausted, and wipes
the tears from his cheeks. 'Really, this thing will kill me. What
are you going to do about it, Roberts?'

ROBERTS, with profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: 'I don't
know, Willis. Don't you see that it must have been--that I must
have robbed--Mr. Bemis?'