Doctor with a
laugh. "He's no fool--yet it's a freak of human nature that a simple
hayseed like that--a man who's lived in the backwoods all his life, is
likely to be the first to tumble before a pot of French rouge like her."

Indeed, in a couple of weeks, there was no further doubt of Mr. Reuben
Allen's infatuation. He dropped into the shop frequently on his way to
and from the restaurant, where he now regularly took his meals; he spent
his evenings in gambling in its private room. Yet Kane was by no means
sure that he was losing his money there unfairly, or that he was used
as a pigeon by the proprietress and her friends. The bully O'Ryan was
turned away; Sparlow grimly suggested that Allen had simply taken his
place, but Kane ingeniously retorted that the Doctor was only piqued
because Allen had evaded his professional treatment. Certainly the
patient had never consented to another examination, although he
repeatedly and gravely bought medicines, and was a generous customer.
Once or twice Kane thought it his duty to caution Allen against his new
friends and enlighten him as to Madame le Blanc's reputation, but his
suggestions were received with a good-humored submission that was either
the effect of unbelief or of perfect resignation to the fact, and he
desisted. One morning Dr. Sparlow said cheerfully:--

"Would you like to hear the last thing about your friend and the
Frenchwoman? The boys can't account for her singling out a fellow like
that for her friend, so they say that the night that she cut herself at
the fete and dropped in here for assistance, she found nobody here but
Allen--a chance customer! That it was HE who cut off her hair and bound
up her wounds in that sincere fashion, and she believed he had saved her
life." The Doctor grinned maliciously as he added: "And as that's the
way history is written you see your reputation is safe."

It may have been a month later that San Francisco was thrown into a
paroxysm of horror and indignation over the assassination of a prominent
citizen and official in the gambling-rooms of Madame le Blanc, at the
hands of a notorious gambler. The gambler had escaped, but in one
of those rare spasms of vengeful morality which sometimes overtakes
communities who have too long winked at and suffered the existence of
evil, the fair proprietress and her whole entourage were arrested and
haled before the coroner's jury at the inquest. The greatest excitement
prevailed; it was sa