gambler, who could not have been very sound asleep, lying in
hearing of the curses of the mob on the shore. At first Parkins did not
move, but August gave him a still more vigorous thrust. Then he peered
out between the blanket and the handkerchief over his forehead.

"I will take that money you won last night from that young man, if you
please."

[Illustration: WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER.]

Parkins saw that it was useless to deny his identity. "Do you want to be
shot?" he asked fiercely.

"Not any more than you want to be hung," said August. "The one would
follow the other in five minutes. Give back that money and I will
go away."

The gambler trembled a minute. He was fairly at bay. He took out a roll
of bills and handed it to August. There was but five hundred. Smith had
the other four hundred and fifty, he said. But August had a quiet German
steadiness of nerve. He said that unless the other four hundred and
fifty were paid at once he should call in the sheriff or the crowd.
Parkins knew that every minute August stood there increased his peril,
and human nature is now very much like human nature in the days of Job.
The devil understood the subject very well when he said that all that a
man hath will he give for his life. Parkins paid the four hundred and
fifty in gold-pieces. He would have paid twice that if August had
demanded it.

CHAPTER XXIX.

AUGUST AND NORMAN.

In a story such as I meant this to be, the development of character
stands for more than the evolution of the plot, and herein is the true
significance of this contact of Wehle with the gamblers, and, indeed, of
this whole steamboat life. It is not enough for one to be good in a
country neighborhood; the sharp contests and severe ordeals of more
exciting life are needed to give temper to the character. August Wehle
was hardly the same man on this morning at Paducah, with the nine
hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket, that he had been the evening
before, when he first felt the sharp resentment against the man who had
outraged his father. In acting on a high plane, one is unconsciously
lifted to that plane. Men become Christians sometimes from the effect of
sudden demands made upon their higher moral nature, demands which compel
them to choose between a life higher than their present living, or a
moral degradation. Such had been August's experience. He had been drawn
upward toward God by the opportunity and necessity for heroic action. I