yet."

Madison looked at him, and smiled mirthlessly.

"My head!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I got you into this, all of you--but
it will take more than my head to get you out. If I could stand for it
myself, I'd do it--but I can't without dragging you in too--we're too
intimately mixed up. If I said it was a deal of mine--they'd ask where
Helena came from--they'd ask where you came from, Flopper. We're
beaten--beaten every way we turn. The game has got us--we haven't a
move. We played it to the limit, the slickest swindle that was ever
worked, and it worked till there's more money than I've tried to count.
And then it changed us from thieves, from--from anything you like--and
now that we want to quit, now that we want a chance to make good, it's
got us in its grip and we can't get away." He flirted a bead of moisture
from his forehead. "My God, I don't know what to do!" he muttered
hoarsely. "It was easy enough to _talk_ about stopping this thing, about
returning the money--but I can't see the way out."

No one answered him--all were silent--as silent as the mute and
venerable figure that sat, listening attentively it seemed, in the
armchair by the fireplace.

Madison turned abruptly after a moment to Pale Face Harry.

"You, Harry," he said, laying a hand on the other's shoulder, "you're
the only one of the four that can walk out of it--you don't show in the
center of the stage--you go. You said the old folks would cry over
you--twenty years is a long time to stay away from the old folks--I--I
never knew mine. You go on back to the little farm out there in the West
where you said you'd like to go, and--and give the old people a hand for
the years they've got left."

Pale Face Harry shook his head.

"God knows I'd like to," he said, choking a little; "that's what I
counted on. God knows I'd like to go out there and lead a decent
life--but I don't go that way--I don't crawl out and leave you--what's
coming to you is coming to me."

"That won't help us any, Harry," said Madison softly, and his hand
tightened in an eloquent pressure on Pale Face Harry's shoulder. "You
go--and God bless you!"

Again Pale Face Harry shook his head.

"No," he said. "I stick. If the game's got you, it's got me too--to the
limit. There's no use talking about that."

The Flopper licked his lips miserably.

"Swipe me!" he mumbled. "Hell wasn't never like dis! Me an' Mamie we've
got it fixed, an' her old man says he'll take me inter d