d.

"Hefty, old boy, how much cash have you got in hand? I want three
hundred dollars."

There was no answer for a moment. Well as Harris thought he knew
Willett, this was a surprise.

"What for?" were the exact words of the response, and neither in tone
nor manner were there encouragement.

"I've got to pull out at dawn, I suppose you've heard, and I shouldn't
like to leave I.O.U.'s--here!" And now the cheery confidence seemed
evaporating. Willett's face was shading.

"Won't you sit down?" asked Harris reflectively. "I'd like to know
something about--this."

"There isn't time, Harris. I'm in a hole, so to speak. I hate to bother
you, but I'd rather come to a classmate and old friend, who is in
position, as I know, to help out, than give these fellows a chance to
talk. Probably they've been talking already, and you've heard," and
now, with something like a resumption of the old familiar manner of
their boy days at the Point, Willett settled on the broad, flat arm of
the reclining chair and threw his own arm, long and muscular, over the
back. There had come to be a saying in the gray battalion, when Willett
was seen strolling with a comrade, his arm caressingly encircling him,
"Well, Willett's doing the bunco act again." Possibly it was the
instinctive shrinking of the wounded shoulder; certain it was that
Harris drew perceptibly away, and Willett noticed it. "I didn't hurt
you, did I?" said he.

"It's rather touchy yet," was the answer.

"Well, say, Hefty, here's the situation. You don't play, so you won't
appreciate, maybe, and I only play once in a good while, but they rung
in a brace game on me. That fellow Case is no better'n a professional,
and you saw for yourself here what a cad he could be. He got my money
that Saturday night and Sunday, and since then, like the cad he is, has
refused to play it out--give me a chance to get it back----"

"Do you play with cads?" interrupted Harris.

"Not when I know it--to start with," answered Willett, flushing and
beginning to draw away. Obviously the affectionate and confidential
method was a failure. "But when a man's got your money, cad or no cad,
you want it back."

"And Case has your three hundred dollars?"

"Just about. Then I owe Craney and Watts quite a lot. I lost a hundred
in cash in the first place. I never saw such luck in all my life! And
now, instead of going back to Prescott, I've got to skip for the
war-path. Watts says the money he gave me in c