unting down here with Poindexter
before she'd quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to see the whole
little game. No sir! I knew it wasn't on account of the gal! Why, when
you came here to-night and told me quite nat'ral-like and easy how
she went off in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your
whiskey after it, I knew you didn't care for her. There's my hand,
Spence; you're a trump, even if you are a little looney, eh? Why, what's
up?"

Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson's words seemed like a
revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a
nobler nature. The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable to
conceive any higher reason for his wife's loyalty than his own personal
popularity and success, now that he no longer possessed that eclat,
made him equally capable of the lowest suspicions. He was a dishonored
fugitive, broken in fortune and reputation--why should she not desert
him! He had been unfaithful to her from wildness, from caprice, from the
effect of those fascinating qualities; it seemed to him natural that she
should be disloyal from more deliberate motives, and he hugged himself
with that belief. Yet there was enough doubt, enough of haunting
suspicion that he had lost or alienated a powerful affection, to make
him thoroughly miserable. He returned his friend's grasp convulsively
and buried his face upon his shoulder. But he was not above feeling
a certain exultation in the effect of his misery upon the dog-like,
unreasoning affection of Patterson, nor could he entirely refrain from
slightly posing his affliction before that sympathetic but melancholy
man. Suddenly he raised his head, drew back, and thrust his hand into
his bosom with a theatrical gesture.

"What's to keep me from killing Poindexter in his tracks?" he said
wildly.

"Nothin' but HIS shooting first," returned Patterson, with dismal
practicality. "He's mighty quick, like all them army men. It's about
even, I reckon, that he don't get ME first," he added in an ominous
voice.

"No!" returned Tucker, grasping his hand again. "This is not your
affair, Patterson; leave him to me when I come back."

"If he ever gets the drop on me, I reckon he won't wait," continued
Patterson lugubriously. "He seems to object to my passin' criticism on
your wife, as if she was a queen or an angel."

The blood came to Spencer's cheek, and he turned uneasily to the window.
"It's dark enough now for a st