night; and while he may eat a meal in the employees' hotels--at
near twice the employee's price--the very attitude in which he is
received says openly that he is admitted only on suffrance--
permitted to eat only because if he starved to death our Uncle
would have the bother of burying him and his Zone Police the
arduous toil of making out an accident report.

Meanwhile I must change my dwelling-place. For the quartermaster
of Corozal had need of all the rooms within his domain, need so
imperative that seventeen bona fide and wrathy employees were even
then bunking in the pool-room of Corozal hotel. Work on the Zone
was moving steadily Pacificward and the accommodations refused to
come with it--at least at the same degree of speed.

Nor was I especially averse to the transfer. The room-mate with
whom fate had cast me in House 81 was a pleasant enough fellow, a
youth of unobjectionable personal manners even though his "eight-
hour graft" was in the sooty seat of a steam-crane high above
Miraflores locks. But he had one slight idiosyncrasy that might in
time have grown annoying. On the night of our first acquaintance,
after we had lain exchanging random experiences till the evening
heat had begun a retreat before the gentle night breeze, I was
awakened from the first doze by my companion sitting suddenly up
in his cot across the room.

"Say, I hope you're not nervous?" he remarked.

"Not immoderately."

"One of my stunts is night-mare," he went on, rising to switch on