it," said I, feeling that, in my present condition, to take
it would be very near to betraying the confidence of my old friend.

"They lost it in a straight game," he hastened to assure me. "I haven't had
a 'brace' box or crooked wheel for four years." This with a sober face and
a twinkle in his eye. "But even if I had helped chance to do the good work
of teaching them to take care of their money, you'd not refuse me. Up town
and down town, and all over the place, what's business, when you come to
look at it sensibly, but trading in stolen goods? Do you know a man who
could honestly earn more than ten or twenty thousand a year--good clean
money by good clean work?"

"Oh, for that matter, your money's as clean as anybody's," said I. "But,
you know, I'm a speculator, Joe. I have my downs--and this happens to be a
stormy time for me. If I take your money, I mayn't be able to account for
it or even to pay dividends on it for--maybe a year or so."

"It's all right, old man. I'll never give it a thought till you remind me
of it. Use it as you'd use your own. I've got to put it behind somebody's
luck--why not yours?"

He finished doing up the package, then he seated himself, and we both
looked at it through the smoke of our cigars.

"It's just as easy to deal in big sums as in little, in large matters as in
small, isn't it, Joe," said I, "once one gets in the way of it?"

"Do you remember--away back there--the morning," he asked musingly--"the
last morning--you and I got up from the straw in the stables over at Jerome
Park--the stables they let us sleep in?"

"And went out in the dawn to roost on the rails and spy on the speed trials
of old Revell's horses?"

"Exactly," said Joe, and we looked at each other and laughed. "We in
rags--gosh, how chilly it was that morning! Do you remember what we talked
about?"

"No," said I, though I did.

"I was proposing to turn a crooked trick--and you wouldn't have it. You
persuaded me to keep straight, Matt. I've never forgotten it. You kept me
straight--showed me what a damn fool a man was to load himself down with a
petty larceny record. You made a man of me, Matt. And then those good looks
of yours caught the eye of that bookmaker's girl, and he gave you a job at
writing sheet--and you worked me in with you."

So long ago it seemed, yet near and real, too, as I sat there, conscious of
every sound and motion, even of the fantastic shapes taken by our upcurling
smoke. How far