half soused anyhow, with four bottles of wine on
the table between him and his dame. When he's through I don't think
he'll know the Elysian Fields from a steam thresher. That blond dame
of his looks like rolling him for his 'poke' without a worry. He'll
hit the trail for his claim to-morrow without the color of a dime."

"Which is he?" Kars demanded, with a certain interest.

"Why, right there by that table under the balcony. See that dude with
the greased head, and the five dollar nosegay in his coat. There, that
one with Sadie Long and the 'Princess.' Get the Princess with the
cream bow and her hair trailing same as it did when she was a child
forty years ago. Next that outfit."

There was deep disgust in the doctor's tones, but there was something
like pity in his half-humorous eyes.

"He hasn't even cleaned himself," he went on. "Looks like he's just
quit the drift bottom of a hundred foot shaft, and come right in full
of pay dirt all over him. Get his outfit. If you ran his pants
through a sluice-box you'd get an elegant 'color.' Guess even Pap
won't stand for him if he gets his eyes around his way."

Kars offered no comment, but he was studying the half-drunken miner
closely.

At that moment the orchestra struck up again. It was a two step, and
for once Alec and the beautiful Maude failed to make an appearance.

"Where's the--kid?" said Kars sharply.

"Sitting around, I guess."

Bill craned carefully. Then he sat back.

"See him?" demanded Kars.

"Sure. They're together. A bottle of wine's keeping them busy."

A look of impatience flashed into the eyes of Kars. His rugged face
darkened.

"It's swinish!" he cried. "It's near getting my patience all out.
Wine. Wine and women. What devil threw his spell over the boy's
mother letting him quit her apron strings----"

"Murray, I guess," interjected Bill.

"Murray! Yes!"

Kars relapsed into silence again. Nor did either of them speak again
till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly
clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping
soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim.
No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary
chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the
prescribed purpose of these intervals in the dance.

Bill was regarding the stranger from the "inside."

"He's not getting noisy drunk," he said. "Seems dopey