head the gambler replied, "Looking at the boat;
she's booming along, just chawing up and spitting out the river, ain't
she? Look at that sweep of water going under her paddle-wheels," he
continued, unbolting the rail and lifting it to allow the two men to
peer curiously over the guards as he pointed to the murderous incline
beneath them; "a man wouldn't stand much show who got dropped into it.
How these paddles would just snatch him bald-headed, pick him up and
slosh him round and round, and then sling him out down there in such a
shape that his own father wouldn't know him."

"Yes," said the first speaker, with an ostentatious little laugh, "but
all that ain't telling us how sister Mary is."

"No," said the gambler slipping into the opening with a white and rigid
face in which nothing seemed living but the eyes, "no, but it's telling
you how two d----d fools who didn't know when to shut their mouths might
get them shut once and forever. It's telling you what might happen to
two men who tried to 'play' a man who didn't care to be 'played,'--a man
who didn't care much what he did, when he did it, or how he did it, but
would do what he'd set out to do--even if in doing it he went to hell
with the men he sent there."

He had stepped out on the guards, beside the two men, closing the rail
behind him. He had placed his hands on their shoulders; they had both
gripped his arms; yet, viewed from the deck above, they seemed at that
moment an amicable, even fraternal group, albeit the faces of the three
were dead white in the moonlight.

"I don't think I'm so very much interested in sister Mary," said the
first speaker quietly, after a pause.

"And I don't seem to think so much of aunt Rachel as I did," said his
companion.

"I thought you wouldn't," said Jack, coolly reopening the rail and
stepping back again. "It all depends upon the way you look at those
things. Good-night."

"Good-night."

The three men paused, shook each other's hands silently, and separated,
Jack sauntering slowly back to his stateroom.

II.

The educational establishment of Mrs. Mix and Madame Bance, situated
in the best quarter of Sacramento and patronized by the highest state
officials and members of the clergy, was a pretty if not an imposing
edifice. Although surrounded by a high white picket fence and entered
through a heavily boarded gate, its balconies festooned with jasmine
and roses, and its spotlessly draped windows as often grace