nd twitched across the mouth and then caught at the breast
of the threadbare black coat abstractedly.

Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers. He
spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided savage--as
he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time when searching for the truth
regarding some crime.

"I've had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always
do. And though there are folks who say I'm no lawyer, as there are those
who say with greater truth that you're no doctor, speaking technically,
we've both had 'revelations.' You've seen a lot that's seamy, and so have
I. You're pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you're as bad a man as ever
saved lives--and lost them. You've had a long tether, and you've swung on
it--swung wide. But you've had a lot of luck that you haven't swung high,
too."

He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot, while the figure
before him swayed animal-like from side to side, muttering.

"You've got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind--however you came by
them," Rawley continued; "and you've kept a lot of people in the West from
passing in their checks before their time. You've rooked 'em, chiselled
'em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old Lamson--fifteen hundred for
the goitre on his neck; and Mrs. Gilligan for the cancer--two thousand,
wasn't it? 'Tincture of Lebanon Leaves' you called the medicine, didn't
you? You must have made fifty thousand or so in the last ten years."

"What I've made I'll keep," was the guttural answer, and the talon-like
fingers clawed the table.

"You've made people pay high for curing them, saving them sometimes; but
you haven't paid me high for saving you in the courts; and there's one
case that you haven't paid me for at all. That was when the patient
died--and you didn't."

The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked
it forward once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he
steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself, "What
does he know--what--which?"

"Malpractice resulting in death--that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and something
else resulting in death--that was the switchman's wife. And the law is
hard in the West where a woman's in the case--quick and hard. Yes, you've
swung wide on your tether; look out that you don't swing high, old man."

"You can prove nothing; it's bluff!" came the reply in a tone of malice
and