JOHNNY--He's got a daughter somewheres out West, I think he told
me once. [He puts the letter on the cash register.] Come to think
of it, I ain't seen old Chris in a dog's age. [Putting his
overcoat on, he comes around the end of the bar.] Guess I'll be
gettin' home. See you to-morrow.

LARRY--Good-night to ye, boss. [As JOHNNY goes toward the street
door, it is pushed open and CHRISTOPHER CHRISTOPHERSON
enters. He is a short, squat, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with
a round, weather-beaten, red face from which his light blue eyes
peer short-sightedly, twinkling with a simple good humor. His
large mouth, overhung by a thick, drooping, yellow mustache, is
childishly self-willed and weak, of an obstinate kindliness. A
thick neck is jammed like a post into the heavy trunk of his body.
His arms with their big, hairy, freckled hands, and his stumpy
legs terminating in large flat feet, are awkwardly short and
muscular. He walks with a clumsy, rolling gait. His voice, when
not raised in a hollow boom, is toned down to a sly, confidential
half-whisper with something vaguely plaintive in its quality. He
is dressed in a wrinkled, ill-fitting dark suit of shore clothes,
and wears a faded cap of gray cloth over his mop of grizzled,
blond hair. Just now his face beams with a too-blissful happiness,
and he has evidently been drinking. He reaches his hand out to
JOHNNY.]

CHRIS--Hello, Yohnny! Have drink on me. Come on, Larry. Give us
drink. Have one yourself. [Putting his hand in his pocket.] Ay gat
money--plenty money.

JOHNNY--[Shakes CHRIS by the hand.] Speak of the devil. We was