n, and laid his hand caressingly
upon his partner's arm--"Don't think I'd hev wanted to take a penny of
it--but I--thar! I COULDN'T hev stood up under it! To hev had YOU, you
that I left behind, comin' down here rollin' in wealth and new partners
and friends, and arrive upon me--and this shanty--and"--he threw towards
the corner of the room a terrible gesture, none the less terrible
that it was illogical and inconsequent to all that had gone
before--"and--and--THAT BROOM!"

There was a dead silence in the room. With it Uncle Billy seemed to feel
himself again transported to the homely cabin at Cedar Camp and that
fateful night, with his partner's strange, determined face before him
as then. He even fancied that he heard the roaring of the pines without,
and did not know that it was the distant sea.

But after a minute Uncle Jim resumed:--

"Of course you've made a little raise somehow, or you wouldn't be here?"

"Yes," said Uncle Billy eagerly. "Yes! I've got"--He stopped and
stammered. "I've got--a--few hundreds."

"Oh, oh!" said Uncle Jim cheerfully. He paused, and then added
earnestly, "I say! You ain't got left, over and above your d--d
foolishness at the Oriental, as much as five hundred dollars?"

"I've got," said Uncle Billy, blushing a little over his first
deliberate and affected lie, "I've got at least five hundred and
seventy-two dollars. Yes," he added tentatively, gazing anxiously at his
partner, "I've got at least that."

"Je whillikins!" said Uncle Jim, with a laugh. Then eagerly, "Look here,
pard! Then we're on velvet! I've got NINE hundred; put your FIVE with
that, and I know a little ranch that we can get for twelve hundred.
That's what I've been savin' up for--that's my little game! No more
minin' for ME. It's got a shanty twice as big as our old cabin, nigh on
a hundred acres, and two mustangs. We can run it with two Chinamen and
jest make it howl! Wot yer say--eh?" He extended his hand.

"I'm in," said Uncle Billy, radiantly grasping Uncle Jim's. But his
smile faded, and his clear simple brow wrinkled in two lines.

Happily Uncle Jim did not notice it. "Now, then, old pard," he said
brightly, "we'll have a gay old time to-night--one of our jamborees!
I've got some whiskey here and a deck o' cards, and we'll have a little
game, you understand, but not for 'keeps' now! No, siree; we'll play for
beans."

A sudden light illuminated Uncle Billy's face again, but he said, with a
grim desperati