ankful in his nasty little heart that he wasn't bound for
hell, where he rightly belonged.

"Did you ever know Dick before he came here, Happy?" asked Barbie.

"I swear to heaven that I never knew that our Dick was Silver Dick
until this very night," sez I; "but I'd be willing to stake my life on
his word, an' I'd take it again the word of any other livin' man--bar
none."

"Thank you, Happy. Good-night." She held her head high as she walked
out o' the room; but I knew that livin' serpents was tearin' at her
heart.

Ol' Cast Steel sat for an hour, his chin on his hands an' his elbows on
the table, lookin' at the pile of money an' checks on the table before
him.

"Gold, gold, gold!" he mutters at last; "it builds the churches an' the
schoolhouses an' the homes; an' it fills the jails and the insane
asylums an' hell itself. It drives brother to murder brother, an'
neither love nor friendship is proof against its curse. It starves
those who scorn it, while those who pay out their souls for it find
themselves sinking, sinking, sinking in its hideous quicksand until at
last it closes above their mad screams. God! if I only had my life to
live over!"

That was just the way he said it, deep an' hoarse an' coning between
his set teeth; an' I felt the hair raisin' on my head. He looked like a
lost soul, an' the whites of his eyes showed in ghastly rings around
the pupils.

"You take this rubbish, Happy," sez he, turnin' on me. "You're too much
like the birds an' the beasts for it to ever injure you. Take it an'
spend it--drink it, throw it away, burn it up, destroy it, an' when it
is gone come back here an' live in the open again an' you'll never be
far from the spirit of God."

Well, I knew it was ol' Cast Steel who was speakin', but it was mighty
hard to believe it. "I don't mean no disrespect to you, Jabez," I sez,
edgin' toward the door, "but I'll see you damned first." An' I slid
outside an' straddled a pony an' rode till the dawn wind blew all the
fever out of me an' let the sunshine in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FEMININE LOGIC

Well, the Diamond Dot was sure a dismal dump after that. Every one had
liked Dick; but they didn't know how much until he was snuffed out like
the flame of a candle. The ol' man had me make a stagger at fillin'
Dick's shoes; but it wasn't what a truthful man would call a coal-ossal
success. Dick had left a lot of directions, tellin' how to judge the
markets an' how to make improv