all over yesterday. We want you."

Haney's face was very grave now. "There is one thing more, Mr. Fordyce.
Mart Haney's reputation must be taken into account. It won't do you anny
good to be associated with him. I don't know that it will do you anny
harm, but I'm dom sure it will do you no good to be associated with me."

Alice interposed, quickly. "A lawyer can't choose his clients--at least,
a _young_ lawyer can't."

Haney ignored the implications of her speech. "I'm not tryin' to cover
up me tracks," said he. "I was a gambler for thirty years. Me whole life
has been a game of chance. There are many who think gambling one of the
high crimes an' misdemeanors, but I think a square game between men is
defensible. I am a gambler by nature. Why shouldn't I be? I grew up a
fat squab of a boy rollin' about on the pavin'-stones of Troy. 'Twas all
luck, bedad, whether I lived or died. I lived, it fell out, and when I
had learned to read I read wild-West stories. Of course, that led me to
go West and jine the Indians, and by stealin' rides and beggin' me bread
I reached Dodge City. 'Twas all chance that I didn't die on the way. Me
mother, poor soul, was worried and I knew it, and finally I put me fist
to it and wrote her a letter to say I was all right. She wrote beggin'
me to return, which I did a couple of years later; but Troy was too slow
for me then, and again I pulled out. I was always takin' risks. Danger
was me delight. I had no trade, but I had faith in me luck. I won--I
almost always won. And so I came to be a gambler along with bein'
sheriff and city marshal, and the like o' that, in one mountain town or
another, but I always played fair. A man who plays a square game is a
gambler. The man who deals underhand is a crook. I'm no crook. I love
the game. To know that the cards are stacked against the other player
takes all the fun out of the deck for me. I want the other felly to have
an equal chance with me--else 'tis no game, but a hold-up. No man ever
rightfully accused me of dealing against him. Yes, 'tis true, me world
is a world of risk." He looked at Alice. "Sure, the Look-Out up
above--if there is such--is there to see that we all have a show for our
ace. If anything interferes with that the game is a crooked one."

Alice began to perceive something big and admirable in this man's
spirit. She was not of his faith--quite the contrary. She was a
fatalist. Nothing happened in her world. But she was imaginative en