f."

Ten minutes later they all stood safely on the lighted thoroughfare of
Water Street.

"Good-night, boys," said Orde. "Go easy, and show up at the booms
Monday."

He turned up the street toward the main part of the town. Newmark joined
him.

"I'll walk a little ways with you," he explained. "And I say, Orde, I
want to apologise to you. 'Most of the evening I've been thinking you
the worst fool I ever saw, but you can take care of yourself at every
stage of the game. The trick was good, but your taking the other
fellow's drink beat it."

VIII

Orde heard no more of Newmark--and hardly thought of him--until over two
weeks later.

In the meantime the riverman, assuming the more conventional garments
of civilisation, lived with his parents in the old Orde homestead at the
edge of town. This was a rather pretentious two-story brick structure,
in the old solid, square architecture, surrounded by a small orchard,
some hickories, and a garden. Orde's father had built it when he arrived
in the pioneer country from New England forty years before. At that time
it was considered well out in the country. Since then the town had
crept to it, so that the row of grand old maples in front shaded a
stone-guttered street. A little patch of corn opposite, and many still
vacant lots above, placed it, however, as about the present limit of
growth.

Jack Orde was the youngest and most energetic of a large family that had
long since scattered to diverse cities and industries. He and Grandpa
and Grandma Orde dwelt now in the big, echoing, old-fashioned house
alone, save for the one girl who called herself the "help" rather than
the servant. Grandpa Orde, now above sixty, was tall, straight, slender.
His hair was quite white, and worn a little long. His features were
finely chiselled and aquiline. From them looked a pair of piercing,
young, black eyes. In his time, Grandpa Orde had been a mighty breaker
of the wilderness; but his time had passed, and with the advent of a
more intensive civilisation he had fallen upon somewhat straitened ways.
Grandma Orde, on the other hand, was a very small, spry old lady, with
a small face, a small figure, small hands and feet. She dressed in the
then usual cap and black silk of old ladies. Half her time she spent at
her housekeeping, which she loved, jingling about from cellar to attic
store-room, seeing that Amanda, the "help," had everything in order.
The other half she sat in a wood