"Pretty loud for a tomb," replied Bean judicially. He was not going to let this Watkins, or whatever his name was, know what a fool he had made of himself in there. Then he remembered something.
"Say," he ventured, "how'd you happen to think up that thing you were always getting off to me back there on the boat—about as a man thinket is he?"
"Tut-tut-tut! Really? But that is from the Holy Scriptures, which should always be read in connection with Science and Health."
" I must get it—something in that. Funny thing," he added genially, "getting good stuff like that out of Hartford, Connecticut."
He left Watkins or Adams staring after him in some bewilderment, a forgotten finger between the leaves of the Badaeker.
He began once more to lay a course through those puzzling streets. He was going to that hotel. He was going to be an upstart and talk to his own wife.
The tomb had cleared his brain.
"I'm no king," he thought; "never was a king; more likely a guinea-pig. But I'm some one now, all right! I'll show 'em; not afraid of the whole lot put together; face 'em all."
He came out upon the river at last and presently found himself back in that circle of the hotel. He stared a while at the bronze effigy surmounting that vainglorious column. Then he drew a long breath and went into the hotel.
