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"Capital," he said finally "Those terrorists were a threat, you know To the stability of the present regiovernment in business"

"Er," I said

"And Lord knows," he said, refilling our glasses, "that they need all the help they can get As a matter of fact they may be a lost cause There’s been a heavy run of arms into the country in the last week or so The liberal opposition is looking stronger than ever A new influx of funds, it see, you would think, but our so-called experts adh

Oh

I alot

Back in the ce there like a dead tree and Knanda Ndoro ready to chop h the air at me

I ducked Just barely, and with no room to spare, but this was one of those instances in which a miss and a mile are of equal value The Glorious Retriever uess he hadn’t expected to miss – hu suit Anyway, his , and perhaps the opium in his system had an effect and perhaps it didn’t, but in any case he took a series of shuffling steps and wound up in the grave

The shovel landed on top of him

More precisely, the business end of the shovel conked him on the top of the head I don’t know if he was unconscious when he fell into the pit or no, but he was certainly out colder than a refrigerator-freezer after the shovel got him

We couldn’t wake hiht to, and I could see her point, but oddly enough I couldn’t work up much of a hate for the Retriever He had saved our lives, whether or not he had intended to do so peration to himatic level, his presence in Modonoland could only be aard

So what I wanted to do was get hirave and onto his feet and away froed He simply wouldn’t wake up I called his na I could think of Nothing had any discernible effect whatsoever He was out and he stayed out

And it was getting light

I tried lifting hi and too heavy and too libox instead, which was easier, and Pluot out of the ceht and the shovel back to the Penner house

I bought s salts at a chemist’s shop, and ent back to the ceet close to the grave, because soers The three drunken gravediggers, passing a pint bottle back and forth, and laughing inanely, and staggering And filling in that erave all the way to the top

When they left, finally, arrave In the daylight I could read the little headstone Gerhard Herdig, it said, and the year he was born and the year he died I subtracted the one frohty-thich was ether

"May he rest in peace," Pluo now, Evan?"

I couldn’t write on Gerhard Herdig’s stone But I knehat the Retriever would want, because he had coraveside and bowed my head and spoke Robert Louis Stevenson’s epitaph into the stillair

Under a wide and starry sky,

Dig ladly die,

And I laid rave for ed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter hos Bunny I told her she meant Mickey Mouse, and I told her I kneas, and I told her to shut up