Herr Schrofft, his eyes still closed, groaned weakly. It was hard that his respectable and well-ordered brain should conjure up a nightmare of vagabondage like this, and supply fitting words for the figure.
"I came southward to Mindoro," the drawling voice went on, "and at the first stroke I am half a man again. I have a gun. Here is a Tin-Roofed House in which to sleep; here is tobacco to smoke; through the chinks in the floor I perceive sleeping chickens which promise food. Best of all, I find here a companion for my solitude. Herr Softy, you may need an heir before long. Behold him here in me."
"_Herr Gott!_" Schrofft groaned again, "I am going crazier every minute." Suddenly he opened his eyes, for the door swung on its hinges and a head surmounted by a shock of coarse black hair was thrust within. At the sight of it, all his aggressiveness returned. "Son of fifty fathers!" he screamed. "Because you think I am dying you run away, and now you have the shamelessness to come back! Go and be a _muchacho_ for the deffel! I shall not die; in two days I shall be strong enough to kill you."
"It was only his canny Filipino way," Mr. Richard Roe broke in, coming to the rescue of the unfaithful servant. "He wanted an alibi for the inquest. Slave," he announced sternly, "I have saved your life. Fetch more cigarettes and a bottle of whatever burning water the market offers. Then kill three chickens and cook them with plenty rice--and no grease. The Señor Softy and I will have a mucho grande chow-chow to celebrate my home-coming. I am his heir. _Sigue! Pronto! Madili!_"
Schrofft glared hopelessly at Mr. Richard Roe. "Then you are real!" he cried. "That boy, he sees you also, he hears you, he obeys! _Mein Gott!_ You are a bum. You haf no home, you haf no money, you haf no grub, you haf no chob. And I would gif a hundert dollars for just one man!"
"Alas," said Mr. Richard Roe hollowly, "I am not a man, and the hundred is unclaimed. I am the stuff that dreams are made of, bad dreams. But I have my better impulses, and I feel them stirring at the prospect of food. I will be a ministering angel to you, an airy, fairy, army nurse, pressing my cool hand softly on your fevered brow." He suited the action to the word, save that the hand was hot and gritty. "Herr Softy, your pulse is rapid, your temperature is rising, you tremble on the verge of a paroxysm of fever. Where is the quinine?"
