s smile might
have been borrowed from my mother's mouth.

"Don't you get cold feet, parson," he counseled kindly. "Be a sport!
Besides, it's all in the Game, you know."

"Is it?"

"Sure!"

"And worth while, John?"

He laughed. "Believe me! It's the worthwhilest thing under the sun to
sit in the Game, with a sport's interest in the hands dealt out,
taking yours as it comes to you, bluffing all you can when you've got
to, playing your cards for all they're worth when it's your turn. No
reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boasting how you did it when
you win. There's nothing in the whole universe so intensely and
immensely worth while as being _you_ and alive, with yourself the
whole kitty and the sky your limit! It's one great old Game, and I'm
for thanking the Big Dealer that I'da whack at playing it." And his
eyes snapped and his lean brown face flushed.

"And you are really willing to--to stake yourself now, my son?"

"Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead ringer for the real
thing in a classy sport yourself!"

"My _dear_ son--!"

My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his red beard.

"Would _you_ back down if this was your call? Why, you're the sort
that would tackle the biggest noise in the ring, even if you knew
you'd be dragged out on your pantry in the first half of the first
round, if you thought you'd got holy orders to do it! If you saw me
getting jellyfish of the spine now, you'd curl up and die--wouldn't
you, honest Injun?" His eyes crinkled and he grinned so infectiously
that my fears subsided. I had an almost superstitious certainty that
nothing really evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the human being who
can meet them with the sword of a smile.

"Well," I admitted cautiously, "jellyfish of the spine must be an
unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of it before."

"You're willing for me to go, then?"

"You'd go anyhow, would you not?"

"Forget it!" said he roughly. "If you think I'd do anything I knew
would cause you uneasiness, you've got another thing coming to you."

"Oh, go, for heaven's sake!" said I, sharply.

"All right. I'll go for heaven's sake," he agreed cheerfully. "And now
it's formally decided I'm to go, and talk, the question arises--what
they really want me to talk about? _I_ don't know how to deal in
glittering generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
generali