Part 16

She closed her eyes, and for several moments lay silent and still.

"Swiggsy--"

The sound was faint now, and Mr. Dootleby bent low to catch it.

"I suspicion something ails me in my side, an' I'm falling, falling, falling---- Ketch me, Swiggsy, hold me--I'm honest wid you, don't you know it. Tell me so, and say it loud, so's I can hear. I'll be good to you when I get--rested."

The street is empty. Not a sound is heard. Not a footfall. Not a voice. The world is sleeping, dreaming of its own ambitions. Stars of the night, are you watching here?

"You said you t'ought I was pretty, Swiggsy, an' it made me so glad an' happy, 'cause I wants you to think I'm pretty--ah! where are you going! Come back! come back! come back! Don't leave me all alone, please, please don't, for I'm falling again, fast, faster all the time, an' I'll soon fall--"

She opened her eyes wide--wider than ever. She looked into Mr. Dootleby's face and smiled. She lifted her hand and dropped it heavily into his. Her head dropped on his shoulder. She had fallen--out of human sight!

THE HON. DOYLE O'MEAGHER.

At this particular moment the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher is a busy man. Tammany Hall's nominating convention is shortly to be held, and Mr. O'Meagher is putting the finishing touches upon the ticket which he has decided that the convention shall adopt. The ticket, written down upon a sheet of paper, is before him, together with a bottle of whisky and a case of cigars, and the finishing touches consist of little pencil-marks placed opposite the candidates' names, indicating that they have visited Mr. O'Meagher and have duly paid over their several campaign assessments--a preliminary formality which Mr. O'Meagher enforces with strict impartiality. The amount of each assessment depends entirely upon Mr. O'Meagher's sense of the fitness of things. To dispute Mr. O'Meagher's sense in this particular is looked upon as treason and rebellion. In the case of the Hon. Thraxton Wimples, the intended candidate for the Supreme Court, the assessment is $20,000.

Mr. Wimples is a little man of profound learning and ancient lineage. Mr. O'Meagher is a man of indifferent learning and no lineage to speak of. Mr. Wimples's grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence, and had moved on three separate occasions that the Continental Congress do now adjourn, while no reason whatever existed, other than the one most obvious but least apt to occur to any one, for supposing that Mr. O'Meagher had ever had a grandfather at all. And yet, as Mr. Wimples, though on the threshold of great dignity and power, walks into Mr. O'Meagher's presence, he find himself all of a tremble, and glows and chills chase each other up and down his spinal column.

"Ah, Mr. O'Meagher," he says, "good-morning! Good-morning! Happy to see you so--er--well. Charming day, so warm for the--er--season."

"Yes," says Mr. O'Meagher, "so it be."

"I received your notification of the high--er--honor, you propose to confer on me."

"Yes," says Mr. O'Meagher, "you're the man for the place."

"So kind of you to--er--say so. You mentioned that the--er--assessment was--"

"Twenty thousand dollars," says Mr. O'Meagher, with great promptness.

"Just so," says Mr. Wimples, "just so."

"And you've called to pay it," says Mr. O'Meagher, taking up his list and his pencil. "I've been expecting you."

"Ah, yes, to be sure, of course. I was going to propose a--er--settlement."

"A what?" says Mr. O'Meagher sharply.

Mr. Wimples mops his brow. "The fact is," he says, "I don't happen to have so considerable a sum as $20,000 at the--er--moment, and I was thinking of suggesting that I just pay you, say, $10,000 down, and give you two--er--notes."

"'Twont do," says Mr. O'Meagher, shaking his head and fetching his pencil down upon the table with a smart tap, "'twont do at all."

"Eh? Indorsed, you know, by--"

"Mr. Wimples, that $20,000 in hard cash must be in my hands by six o'clock to-night, or your name goes off the ticket."

"O--er--Lud!" says Mr. Wimples, sadly.

"By six P. M."

"But, my dear Mr. O'Meagher--"

"Or your name goes off the ticket."