ce, told me how once The
Duke had broken into a gentle laugh. A French half-breed freighter on
his way north had entered into a game of poker with The Duke, with the
result that his six months' pay stood in a little heap at his enemy's
left hand. The enraged freighter accused his smiling opponent of being a
cheat, and was proceeding to demolish him with one mighty blow. But
The Duke, still smiling, and without moving from his chair, caught the
descending fist, slowly crushed the fingers open, and steadily drew the
Frenchman to his knees, gripping him so cruelly in the meantime that he
was forced to cry aloud in agony for mercy. Then it was that The Duke
broke into a light laugh and, touching the kneeling Frenchman on his
cheek with his finger-tips, said: "Look here, my man, you shouldn't
play the game till you know how to do it and with whom you play." Then,
handing him back the money, he added: "I want money, but not yours."
Then, as he sat looking at the unfortunate wretch dividing his attention
between his money and his bleeding fingers, he once more broke into a
gentle laugh that was not good to hear.

The Duke was by all odds the most striking figure in the Company of
the Noble Seven, and his word went farther than that of any other.
His shadow was Bruce, an Edinburgh University man, metaphysical,
argumentative, persistent, devoted to The Duke. Indeed, his chief
ambition was to attain to The Duke's high and lordly manner; but,
inasmuch as he was rather squat in figure and had an open, good-natured
face and a Scotch voice of the hard and rasping kind, his attempts at
imitation were not conspicuously successful. Every mail that reached
Swan Creek brought him a letter from home. At first, after I had got
to know him, he would give me now and then a letter to read, but as the
tone became more and more anxious he ceased to let me read them, and I
was glad enough of this. How he could read those letters and go the pace
of the Noble Seven I could not see. Poor Bruce! He had good impulses, a
generous heart, but the "Permit" nights and the hunts and the "roundups"
and the poker and all the wild excesses of the Company were more than he
could stand.

Then there were the two Hill brothers, the younger, Bertie, a
fair-haired, bright-faced youngster, none too able to look after
himself, but much inclined to follies of all degrees and sorts. But
he was warm-hearted and devoted to his big brother, Humphrey, called
"Hump," who h