“‘All right,’ says I.  ’There’s no use arguing against the rum question.  You take his feet.’

“We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into the back room of the cafe—­the temple, I mean—­and leaned him against the wall.  It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an all-night Broadway joint on New-Year’s Eve.

“Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk shawls and began to undress himself.

“‘Oh, figs!’ says I.  ’Is it thus?  Strong drink is an adder and subtractor, too.  Is it the heat or the call of the wild that’s got you?’

“But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply.  He stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules, and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and. stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw.  And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to.

“In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath.  Danged if I wasn’t knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked so exactly much like Florence Blue Feather.  ‘I wonder,’ says I to myself, ‘if she has been reincarcerated, too?  If I could see,’ says I to myself, ‘whether she has a mole on her left—­’ But the next minute I thought she looked one-eighth of a shade darker than Florence; but she looked good at that.  And High Jack hadn’t drunk all the rum that had been drank.

“The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and got down and massaged her nose with the floor, like the rest did.  Then she went nearer and laid the flower wreath on the block of stone at High Jack’s feet.  Rummy as I was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think of offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provisions.  Even a stone god ought to appreciate a little sentiment like that on top of the fancy groceries they had piled up in front of him.

“And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, quiet, and mentions a few words that sounded just like the hieroglyphics carved on the walls of the ruin.  The girl gives a little jump backward, and her eyes fly open as big as doughnuts; but she don’t beat it.

“Why didn’t she?  I’ll tell you why I think why.  It don’t seem to a girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone god should come to life for her.  If he was to do it for one of them snub-nosed brown girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would be different—­but her!  I’ll bet she said to herself:  ’Well, goodness me! you’ve been a long time getting on your job.  I’ve half a mind not to speak to you.’

“But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away out of the temple together.  By the time I’d had time to take another drink and enter upon the scene they was twenty yards away, going up the path in the woods that the girl had come down.  With the natural scenery already in place, it was just like a play to watch ’em—­she looking up at him, and him giving her back the best that an Indian can hand, out in the way of a goo-goo eye.  But there wasn’t anything in that recarnification and revulsion to tintype for me.