it
a point. He nodded his assent, and they got up, but there was no
increase in his color. She read as plain as day in his face that he
intended murder this night and Nelly was truly frightened.

So she tried different tactics. All the way to the substantial little
house which Lebrun had built at a little distance from the gambling
hall, she kept up a running fire of steady conversation. But when she
said good night to him, his face was still set. She had not deceived
him. When he turned, she saw him go back into the night with long
strides, and within half an hour she knew, as clearly as if she were
remembering the picture instead of foreseeing it, that Jack and Donnegan
would face each other gun in hand on the floor of Milligan's dance hall.

Still, she was not foolish enough to run after Jack, take his arm, and
make a direct appeal. It would be too much like begging for Donnegan,
and even if Jack forgave her for this interest in his rival, she had
sense enough to feel that Donnegan himself never would. Something,
however, must be done to prevent the fight, and she took the straightest
course.

She went as fast as a run would carry her straight behind the
intervening houses and came to the back entrance to the gaming hall.
There she entered and stepped into the little office of her father.
Black Lebrun was not there. She did not want him. In his place there sat
the Pedlar and Joe Rix; they were members of Lord Nick's chosen crew,
and since Nick's temporary alliance with Lebrun for the sake of
plundering Jack Landis, Nick's men were Nelly's men. Indeed, this was a
formidable pair. They were the kind of men about whom many whispers and
no facts circulate: and yet the facts are far worse than the whispers.
It was said that Joe Rix, who was a fat little man with a great aversion
to a razor and a pair of shallow, pale blue eyes, was in reality a
merciless fiend. He was; and he was more than that, if there be a
stronger superlative. If Lord Nick had dirty work to be done, there was
the man who did it with a relish. The Pedlar, on the other hand, was an
exact opposite. He was long, lean, raw-boned, and prodigiously strong in
spite of his lack of flesh. He had vast hands, all loose skin and
outstanding tendons; he had a fleshless face over which his smile was
capable of extending limitlessly. He was the sort of a man from whom one
would expect shrewdness, some cunning, stubbornness, a dry humor, and
many principles. All of