human
McTeague's dental parlors in his better days, was a half-crazy girl from somewhere in Central America, she herself did not remember just where. But she had a wonderful story about her people owning a dinner service of pure gold with a punch bowl you could scarcely lift, which rang like a church bell when you struck it. On the strength of this story
gpt
Zercow, the Jew junk man, marries her, and believing that she knows where this treasure is hidden, bullies and tortures her to force her to disclose her secret. At last
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Maria is found with her throat cut, and
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Zercow
human
McTeague's crime. He kills his wife to get possession of her money, and escapes to the mountains. While he is on his way south, pushing toward Mexico, he is overtaken by his murdered wife's cousin and former suitor. Both men are half mad with thirst, and there in the desert wastes of Death's Valley, they spring to their last conflict. The cousin falls, but before he dies he slips a handcuff over
gpt
McTeague's arm, and so the author leaves his hero in the wastes of Death's Valley, a hundred miles from water, with a dead man chained to his arm. As he stands there the canary bird, the survivor of his happier days, to which he had clung with stubborn affection, begins
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It reminds one a little of Stevenson's use of poor
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Goddedaal's canary in
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The Wrecker.