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But not so much as ye deserved; not well enough, maybe. And that's a long time ago. And perhaps, as you say, I'm a bad hand at remembering. . . . And I've got my business to see to. . . ."

He left her vaguely pained; and he came no more near her. But the simple honesty of the man was not to be appreciated by Rupert Watson. A fiend of jealousy was always half aroused in him, and he lost no opportunity of poisoning his wife's mind against his unconscious partner.

"Briggs," he said with a harsh laugh to Dorothy, "Briggs seems to have forgotten old times, and never comes to see you? Why, there's a hundred other women could say the same. He's the most inconstant man that ever lived. And as for friendship to menHe laughed, as if that virtue was foreign to Briggs's character entirely.

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III.

There was a big dinner-party on at Briggs' new house. He had taken one of the best houses in San Medane, and was just beginning to live with lavish display. Not because he had taken a fancy to that manner of life, but because he was struggling and in difficulties. He had been terribly crippled in his efforts to set Rupe Watson straight, and to keep him straight. And, after all, he had not succeeded. Money seemed to flow away in a ceaseless stream; there was a hole, somewhere, through which it all poured away.

He had at length discovered that hole. Rupert Watson was in secret a gambler, and a particularly unlucky one; he lost heavily nearly every night.

When Briggs discovered that fact he sent Watson away hastily to a quiet little place, two days distant by stage. He hoped to separate him from his companions. And also he hoped, perhaps, that the increasing hollowness of "Dorethy's" eyes might be stayed. He did not see her before she went, but he sought a private interview with Rupert; and from that interview he returned a considerably poorer man.

Now he was struggling to make head against his difficulties. He had great hope in a mine which he was trying to float. But if rumours of his unsound financial condition got about before he had succeeded, there would probably be a crash. To diminish that danger he was launching out into a display that had not formerly been necessary. And to this dinner-party he had invited the men necessary to his plans-men who would back him with the required capital.

To impress them with a sense of his stability, the affair was conducted with a lavish ostentation in his big house.

During the dinner he unfolded to them, as if carelessly, his scheme of the mine; then made a move to the next room, a billiard-room, and there, over a game, casually hinted at accepting co-operation from them-or from other capitalists.

Then, as if by chance, he withdrew a few minutes, to give them the opportunity of discussing his words among themselves. He guessed they would bite. He stood in the dining-room, at the window, with his back to all the lavish display of the feast that was not yet cleared away. He stood there reviewing his position. A heavy storm was raging outside, and the snow beat heavily against the glass.

There came a tapping at the door-so faint and timid that, in his preoccupation, he did not at once heed it. But when it was repeated he went to the door with nervous haste, and flung it open. "Dorethy!" he uttered, falling a step back. "And in such weather!"

"Yes," she said, trying to smile; but such a wan ghost of a smile, and she was trembling violently. "I have been coming two days by stage, and it wasn't bad when I started. And-and-Rupert said I

must see you-instantly.”

"Instantly!" he echoed dully; he knew some new blow was about to fall.

"Yes; he said it was . . . a matter. . . of life and death."

She spoke with such difficulty that he wheeled a chair hastily forward and made her sit down.

"Now then, what is this matter of life and death?" he asked, trying to speak lightly.

"I don't know. It is in this letter."

He took it and read it twice-first hurriedly, as if to grasp its meaning, then again slowly and as if calculating as he went. crumpled it in his hand and faced her.

"And what were you to do?"

She turned rosy-red, and trembled again.

Then

"I was to pray you, by the memory of the old time, to help us," she whispered. "Only a little, a little money, and Rupert would be able to recover all that he has lost. Ah, Mr. Briggs," she burst out wildly, "will you not help me? If you do not, he will do something so desperate that I should die of shame. Ah, Clem Ah, Mr. Briggs, only a little! Help me, by the memory of the old time." He took a hasty pace across the room and returned.

"He told you to say this!" he said.

"But I cannot help you,

Dorethy. It is impossible."

"Cannot!" she echoed, as if stunned.

"I . . . have no money."

"You have no money!" and he saw her suddenly gaze round at the evidences of wealth about her, as if doubtful of his words.

"It is true, Dorethy," he said, stung to the quick; "I. . . have been ruined."

She sat motionless and pale.

"Briggs," said a voice in the billiard-room, so loudly that she heard the words distinctly in the pause, "you may take my word for it" (one of the capitalists was speaking with emphasis), " is the richest man on the Run at this moment."

But Briggs in his trouble made no sign that he had heard.

Rupert has had much money altogether," he said to Dorothy; "a big pile when he married you-so I understood. Where did he get that from ?”

"From an uncle in New York," she said simply.

He sat down and stared at her.

"And all the other money that he has had lately did that all

come from the uncle too?"

"Yes; all from the uncle."

:

"Go," he said harshly; "tell him from me he must apply to the uncle once more, I cannot help him."

She rose mechanically.

It seemed that she had had some last

appeal to make, but at his changed voice it was stifled.

"But-the weather! Dorethy, you must stay here."

"Not one moment," she said swiftly. "The return stage leaves in half an hour. I can catch it."

She went to the door, then turned round, and her hollow eyes lit up with a strange fire.

"You were very kind to me in the old time. You called me your daughter, and I honoured you then, and loved you. I don't mind owning it now" (she went on quickly), "because it is all past. I have honoured you ever since; loved you, I think; and all the hard things I have heard of you I have not believed. I know how shamefully you have treated my husband, for he told me all about it how you have been taking advantage of his youth and inexperience to get the better of him in your business dealings, till you have ruined him. And now you have succeeded; and you are the richer for it, and he is ruined; and you will not help me. You have forgotten the old time and your old pretended affection, as he said you

would. But in spite of the hard way you dealt with him, and in spite of the bad things he told me about you, I honoured you, in And now for my sins I am punished. . . .

opposition to his words. Now"

She was gone.

He strode to the door.

But he had no answer.

"Dorethy! "

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She was gone out into the cold night. Unconsciously he uncrumpled the letter and read it once more. What he had just stated was the truth. He was beggared. And the first intimation of it that he had received was the letter she had brought. Rupert Watson had got among gamblers again, had lost all his money, had forged the name "C. L. Briggs" for many thousand dollars. He prayed his rich benefactor to forgive him this once, and to hush it up, for his wife's sake.

But that asking still for more! He had set his unwitting wife to that lowest depth of infamy.

Nevertheless, for her sake, the plea of the letter had availed. He accepted the forged bills as genuine. But it reduced him to beggary.

Meanwhile she journeyed back in the stage: two days of misery and dull pain and a shattered ideal; and went out across the plains three miles, to where her husband awaited her.

us."

"Well?" he greeted her eagerly; "how did it work?" "It was no good," she said wearily. "He would not help

"Didn't you make yourself sweet to him, as I told you to?" he flashed out angrily.

"I. . . tried to appeal to him. He said he was ruined."

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I couldn't do any more.

"Ruined!" said Watson, uneasily pacing up and down. "What I've had from him can't have ruined him yet, surely!"

"What you have had from him?"

"Well, say the fifty thousand dollars I had when I married you, for one thing."

“The fifty. . . . But that was the uncle in New York !"

"He is the uncle in New York !'" mimicked Watson tartly. "He's been helping us all along."

"He! Why did you not tell me so before," she asked in desperation, remembering the words with which she had closed her interview two days ago.

"Surely a man doesn't brag about it when he eats dirt! If old Briggs was tired of you, and paid me handsomely to take you off his

hands, and has been keeping me going ever since, to keep my tongue Why, what the devil's the matter now?"

quiet

For she had sunk back in a dead faint.

"Well,

He went out hastily, saddled his horse, and rode away. I've got to do something desperate at last, I suppose. What a fool I was not to play old Briggs a little closer to my chest!"

"Rupert."

IV.

It was a quiet call, outside the window, three nights later. Watson had been gone all day, and his wife lay, weak and in despair, in the rude cabin which was now her shelter. But she rose to her feet as a man came in; it was Briggs.

"Dorethy," he said, coming to her with simple directness, "I wasn't so stone-broke as I thought. And . . . and . . . I'm fond o' Rupe, and thought as I was passin' this way I 'ud look in and see if I could help him. . . . There, there, girl, that'll do. . . . .. No, of course not; we've forgotten all you said the other night--clean forgotten it. It was all a mistake; you knew nothin' about things in general; and you didn't know what you were talkin' about. I don't think nothin' of that; and you mustn't mind it either. There, there, girl. yes, yes, of course! I'm glad to see you again and make it up; and so are you too . . . in course, in course. And there's no need for waterworks, is there?

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"And," he went on hurriedly, for her wild unrestraint was unnerving his assumption of cheery humour, "we've made it up again. But I ain't here for that, and there's no time for foolin'. When I came up from the town thar wuz a gang of men startin' out after"

A sound was heard outside, of a horseman riding furiously up to the cabin. A moment later Rupert Watson entered.

"Rupe," said Briggs, going straight to him, "thar ez a gang of men arter you. Hangin's the matter in hand. They'll be here in a brace o' shakes. Here's a few dollars; and there's my horse outside. You and your wife must clear, hard. I'll hold the cabin, and keep 'em in check till you're clear away. We'll meet again some day, never fear! Good-bye."

Five minutes later he was barricading himself in the cabin, and alone.

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"The tarnation idiot! he muttered as he worked. "Now, in course, there's the devil to pay."

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