you be a good boy and rest your mind and go to sleep like you
need to."

"Sleep?" he said. "Likely!"

He thought the night air worst of all in April; he hadn't a doubt
it would kill him, he declared. "It's miraculous what the human
frame WILL survive," he admitted on the last evening of that
month. "But you and the doctor ought to both be taught it won't
stand too dang much! You poison a man and poison and poison him
with this April night air----"

"Can't poison you with much more of it," Miss Perry interrupted
him, indulgently. "To-morrow it'll be May night air, and I
expect that'll be a lot better for you, don't you? Now let's
just sober down and be a good boy and get some nice sound sleep."

She gave him his medicine, and, having set the glass upon the
center table, returned to her cot, where, after a still interval,
she snored faintly. Upon this, his expression became that of a
man goaded out of overpowering weariness into irony.

"Sleep? Oh, CERTAINLY, thank you!"

However, he did sleep intermittently, drowsed between times, and
even dreamed; but, forgetting his dreams before he opened his
eyes, and having some part of him all the while aware of his
discomfort, he believed, as usual, that he lay awake the whole
night long. He was conscious of the city as of some single great
creature resting fitfully in the dark outside his windows. It