s smile of white teeth and
perfect assurance and much good will.

Now, the cashier whom he faced was a tall man worn thin with the worries
of his position and the care of a family. He lived in a large white
house, and his wife never seemed able to find a cook who could cook; so
the cashier was troubled with indigestion that made his manner one of
passive irritation with life. His children were for some reason forever
"coming down" with colds or whooping-cough or measles or something (you
have seen children like that), so his eyes were always tired with wakeful
nights. It needed a Luck Lindsay smile to bring any answering light into
the harassed face of that cashier, but it got there after the first
surprised glance.

Luck stood his camera--screwed to its tripod--against the wall by the
door. "I'm Luck Lindsay, Mr. White," he announced in his easy, Texas
drawl. "I'm in a hurry, so I'll omit my full autobiography, if you don't
mind, and let you draw your own conclusions about my reputation and
character. I've a five-reel feature film called _The Phantom Herd_ just
completed, and I want to take it down to El Paso and show it before the
Texas Cattlemen's Convention which meets there to-day. I want their
endorsement of it as a Western film which really portrays the West, to
incorporate in my advertisements in all the trade journals. But the
production of the film took my last cent, and I've got to raise money on
my camera for the trip down there. You see what I mean. I'm broke, and
I've got to catch that four o'clock train or the whole thing stops right
here. This camera cost me close to fifteen hundred dollars. Here are the
receipted sales slips to prove it. In Los Angeles I could easily get--"
He caught the beginning of a denial in Mr. White's sidewise movement of
the head--"ten times as much money on it as you can give me. You probably
don't know anything at all about motion-picture cameras, but you can read
these slips and find out how prices run."

Mr. White had in a measure recovered from the effects of Luck's smile. He
picked up the slips and glanced at them indifferently. "There's a
pawn-shop just down the street, I believe," he said. "Why--"

"I want to leave this camera here with you, anyway," Luck interrupted.
"It's valuable--too valuable to take any risk of fire or burglary. I
want to leave it in your vault. You've handled a good deal of my money,
and you know who I am, and what my standing is, or else you are