y he's
just got a bunch of money from the old country, and he's cuttin' a wide
swath with it. If I'd kept me mouth shut he'd have gone on to Brandon
and never knowed a word about there being a purty young thing near. But
I watched him hitchin' up, and didn't he drive right over there; and I
tell you, Da, he means no good."

"Don't worry, Maggie," John Corbett said, soothingly. "He can't pick
her up and run off with her. Mrs. Fred's no fool."

"He's a divil!" Maggie declared with conviction. "Mind you, Da, there
ain't many that can put the comaudher on me, but Rance Belmont done it
once."

Mr. Corbett looked up with interest and waited for her to speak.

"It was about the card-playin'. You know I've never allowed a card in
me house since I had a house, and never intended to, but the last day
Rance Belmont was here--that was away last spring, when you were away--
he begins to play with one of the boys that was in for dinner. Right in
there on the sewin'-machine in plain sight of all of us I saw them, and
I wiped me hands and tied up me apron, and I walked in, and says I,
'I'll be obliged to you, Mr. Belmont, to put them by,' and I looked at
him, stiff as pork. 'Why, certainly, Mrs. Corbett,' says he, smilin' at
me as if I had said somethin' pleasant. I felt a little bit ashamed,
and went on to sort of explain about bein' brought up in the Army and
all that, and he talked so nice about the Army that you would have
thought it was old Major Morris come back again from the dead, and
pretty soon he had me talkin' away to him and likin' him; and says he,
'I was just going to show Jimmy here a funny trick that can be done
with cards, but,' says he, 'if Mrs. Corbett objects I wouldn't offend
her for the world!' Now here's the part that scares me, Da--me, Maggie
Murphy, that hates cards like I do the divil; says I to him, 'Oh, go
on, Mr. Belmont; I don't mind at all!' Now what do you think of that,
Da?"

John Corbett sat thinking, but he was not thinking of what Maggie
thought he was thinking. He was wondering what trick it was that Rance
Belmont had showed Jimmy Peters!

CHAPTER VI.

_THE COUNTER-IRRITANT._

When Fred Brydon made the discovery that his two brothers spent a great
deal of their time in the pleasant though unprofitable occupation of
card-playing with two or three of the other impecunious young men of
the neighborhood, he remonstrated with them on this apparent waste of
time. When he later discovered t