"Not on your life," said the Idiot. "I'd had enough. I just folded my shredded overcoat up into a pillow, and lay down and went to sleep there until the time came to close the shop for the night, when I sneaked out, filled my pockets full of soap, clothespins, and other knickknacks, and left a dollar bill on the floor to pay for them. They didn't deserve the dollar, considering[Pg 50] the damage I had sustained, but for the sake of my poor but honest parents I felt that I ought to leave something in the way of ready money behind me to pay for the loot."

[Pg 50]

"It's a wonder you weren't arrested for shoplifting," said Mr. Brief.

"They couldn't have proved anything on me," said the Idiot, "even if they had thought of it. I had a perfectly good defense, anyhow."

"What was that?" asked the Lawyer.

"Temporary insanity," said the Idiot. "After my experience yesterday afternoon I am convinced that no jury in the world would hold that a man was in his right mind who, with no compelling reasons save generosity to stir him to do so, plunged into a maelstrom of that sort. It would be a clear case of either attempted suicide or mental aberration. Of course, if I had been dressed for it in a suit of armor, and[Pg 51] had been armed with a battle-axe, or a long, sharp-pointed spear, it might have looked like a case of highway robbery; but no male human being in his right mind is going to subject himself to the hazards to life, limb, eye, ear, and happiness, that I risked when I entered that crowd for the sole purpose of getting away unobserved with a package of nickel-plated hairpins, worth four cents and selling at seven, and a couple of hand-painted fly swatters worth ten cents a gross."

[Pg 51]

The Landlady laughed a long, loud, silvery laugh, with just a little touch of derision in it.

"O you men, you men!" she ejaculated. "You call yourselves the stronger sex, and plume yourselves on your superior physical endurance, and yet when it comes to a test, where are you?"

"Under the table, Madame, under the table," sighed the Idiot. "I for one frankly admit the soft impeachment."[Pg 52]

[Pg 52]

"Yes," said the Landlady, "but I'll warrant you never found a woman under the table. We women, weak and defenseless though we be, go through that 

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