and. "This man is Jack Hamlin." As his wife's remote and
introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added quickly. "The
noted gambler!"

"Gambler?" echoed his wife, still vaguely.

"Yes--reg'lar; it's his business."

"Goodness, Seth! He can't expect to do it here."

"No," said Seth quickly, with that sense of fairness to his fellow
man which most women find it so difficult to understand. "No--and he
probably won't mention the word 'card' while he's here."

"Well?" said Mrs. Rivers interrogatively.

"And," continued Seth, seeing that the objection was not pressed, "he's
one of them desprit men! A reg'lar fighter! Killed two or three men in
dools!"

Mrs. Rivers stared. "What could Dr. Duchesne have been thinking of? Why,
we wouldn't be safe in the house with him!"

Again Seth's sense of equity triumphed. "I never heard of his fightin'
anybody but his own kind, and when he was bullyragged. And ez to women
he's quite t'other way in fact, and that's why I think ye oughter know
it afore you let him come. He don't go round with decent women. In
fact"--But here Mr. Rivers, in the sanctity of conjugal confidences and
the fullness of Bible reading, used a few strong scriptural substantives
happily unnecessary to repeat here.

"Seth!" said Mrs. Rivers suddenly, "you seem to know this man."

The unexpectedness and irrelevancy of this for a moment startled Seth.
But that chaste and God-fearing man had no secrets. "Only by hearsay,
Jane," he returned quietly; "but if ye say the word I'll stop his comin'
now."

"It's too late," said Mrs. Rivers decidedly.

"I reckon not," returned her husband, "and that's why I came straight
here. I've only got to meet them at the depot and say this thing can't
be done--and that's the end of it. They'll go off quiet to the hotel."

"I don't like to disappoint the doctor, Seth," said Mrs. Rivers. "We
might," she added, with a troubled look of inquiry at her husband, "we
might take that Mr. Hamlin on trial. Like as not he won't stay, anyway,
when he sees what we're like, Seth. What do you think? It would be only
our Christian duty, too."

"I was thinkin' o' that as a professin' Christian, Jane," said her
husband. "But supposin' that other Christians don't look at it in that
light. Thar's Deacon Stubbs and his wife and the parson. Ye remember
what he said about 'no covenant with sin'?"

"The Stubbses have no right to dictate who I'll have in my house," said
Mrs. Rivers quickly,