t or fifty entered the room.

Closing the door Joe Montgomery slipped off one patched and ragged cloth
mitten and removed his battered cap.

"Well, what the devil do you want?" demanded Gilmore sharply.

Joe, shuffling and shambling, edged toward the grate.

"Boss, I want to drop a word with you!" he said in a husky voice. His
glance did not quite meet Gilmore's, but the moment Gilmore shifted his
gaze, that moment Joe's small, bright blue eyes sought the gambler's.

Gilmore and Joe Montgomery were distantly related, and while the latter
never presumed on the score of this remote connection, the gambler
himself tacitly admitted it by the help he now and then extended him,
for Montgomery's means of subsistence were at the best precarious. If he
had been called on to do so, he would have described himself as a
handy-man, since he lived by the doing of odd jobs. He cleaned carpets
in the spring; he cut lawns in the summer; in the fall he carried coal
into the cellars of Mount Hope, and in the winter he shoveled the snow
off Mount Hope's pavements; and at all times and in all seasons,
whether these industries flourished or languished, he drank.

He now established himself on Mr. Gilmore's hearth,--a necessity--for he
bent his hulking body and stuck his curly red head well into the grate;
then as he withdrew it, he passed the back of his hand across his
discolored lip.

"Excuse me, boss, I had to!" he apologized.

In Mr. Gilmore's presence Joe inclined toward a humble decency, for he
was vaguely aware that he was an unclean thing, and that only the
mysterious bond of blood gave him this rich and powerful patron.

"Well, you old sot!" said Gilmore pleasantly. "You haven't drunk
yourself to death since I saw you in McBride's last night?"

The handy-man gave him a wide toothless grin, and his bashful blue eyes
shifted, shuttle-wise, in their sockets until he was able to survey in
full the splendor of the apartment.

"Boss, you got a sure-enough well-dressed room; I never seen anything
that could hold a candle to it,--it's a bird!" He stole a shy abashed
glance at the pictures on the wall, but becoming aware that Gilmore was
watching him, he dropped his eyes in some confusion. "I reckon' them
female pictures cost a fortune!" he said.

"They cost enough!" rejoined Gilmore, and again Montgomery ventured a
covert glance in the direction of one of the works of art.

"I reckon it was summer-time!" he hinted modestly.