ps a
shade influenced by having listened to your own graphic style. But come,
men! Let us separate and be off, ere we are discovered. And mind, not a
word of this. One false step might ruin all! So have a care."

It must have been one of the few perfect moments in the life of Billy.

"You may rely upon William Durgin to the bitter end," said he, with a
quiet dignity. "But there is work yet ahead for me to-night.

"I got to regain my hotel unobserved. My life is not safe a moment with
my every step dogged by the hired assassins of that infamous scoundrel."

"If death or disaster come to you, Billy, you shall not be unavenged. We
swear it here on this spot. _Swear_, Cal!"

"Say," Billy called back to us, after adjusting his beard, "if anything
comes of this,--rewards or anything,--first thing I'm goin' a' do--git
me a good forty-four Colts. You can't stop a man with this here little
twenty-two, an' it's only a one-shot at that. I'd be in a _nice_ hole
sometime, wouldn't I, with my back up against a wall an' six or seven of
'em comin' for me an' nothin' but _this_ in my jeans?"

"Point that the other way, Billy--we'll see about a bigger one later. We
can't do anything to-night. And sell your life as dearly as possible if
you have to sell it."

I fell asleep that night on a conviction that our taste for barren
reality is our chief error. If we could only believe forever, what a
good world it could be--"a world of fine fabling," indeed! Also I
wondered what J. Rodney Potts might have to apprehend from the leaven of
fact in the fabling of Billy Durgin.

CHAPTER IX

HOW THE BOSS SAVED HIMSELF

He whom they had, with facetious intent, called "the Boss of Little
Arcady" now began to wear a mien of defiance. From being confessedly
distraught, he displayed, as the days went by, a spiritual uplift that
fell but little short of arrogance. He did not permit any reason to be
revealed for this marked change of demeanor. He was confident but
secretive, serene but furtive, as one who has endured gibes for the sake
of one brilliant _coup_.

This apparently causeless change permeated even to the columns of the
_Argus_. It had been observed by more than one of us that these had of
late suffered from the depression of their editor. Their general tone
had been negative. Now they spoke in a lightsome tone of
self-sufficiency. They were gay, even jaunty. It was in this very epoch
that the verse was born which for many years