to wake up and find that he had but half an hour in which to eat his
breakfast and get across town to the bookkeeper's stool he had
occupied the day before. He sometimes felt of his ears reminiscently,
for they seemed in some way to clearly connect him with his last
waking hours. He never quite got over listening for the alarm clock.

At fifty-three, he was no older in appearance than when he was forty-
three. If anything, he seemed younger, for the harassed, care-worn
expression had disappeared, leaving him bland, benign of countenance,
although the same imperishable wrinkles lined his pinched cheeks. He
was just as careless about his sparse hair as in the days of old. It
was never by any chance sleek and orderly. The habit of running his
fingers through his thatch still clung to him, significant reminder of
the perplexities that filled his daily life over the ledgers and day-
books. In all other respects, however, he was a re-made man.

His trim little frame was clothed in expensive garments; his patent
leather pumps were the handiwork of the most fashionable of
bootmakers, and quite uncomfortable; his hosiery was of the finest
silk and his watch-chain was of platinum; there were pearl studs in
his unpolished shirt front and four shining black buttons on his neat
white waistcoat; his clawhammer coat had a velvet collar and fitted
him about the shoulders as if it had been constructed for a man who
possessed much more of a figure than he; and his trousers were primly
pressed. Not the same old Bingle outwardly, you will say, but you are
wrong. He was, and always will be, like the leopard.

A certain briskness of manner, inspired by necessity, had come to him
in these days of opulence. His position in life made its demands, and
one of the most exacting of these denied him the privileges of