lips; and his hand, after fumbling aimlessly around a button, dropped
helplessly at his side. For as he leaned his back against the bar, and
faced the group, he, for the first time, became aware that every eye but
one was fixed upon him. His quick, nervous apprehension at once leaped
to the truth. His miserable secret was out, and abroad in the very air
about him. As a last resort, he glanced despairingly at Henry York; but
his flushed face was turned toward the windows.

No word was spoken. As the bar-keeper silently swung a decanter and
glass before him, he took a cracker from a dish, and mumbled it with
affected unconcern. He lingered over his liquor until its potency
stiffened his relaxed sinews, and dulled the nervous edge of his
apprehension, and then he suddenly faced around. "It don't look as if we
were goin' to hev any rain much afore Christmas," he said with defiant
ease.

No one made any reply.

"Just like this in '52, and again in '60. It's always been my opinion
that these dry seasons come reg'lar. I've said it afore. I say it again.
It's jist as I said about going home, you know," he added with desperate
recklessness.

"Thar's a man," said Abner Dean lazily, "ez sez you never went home.
Thar's a man ez sez you've been three years in Sonora. Thar's a man ez
sez you hain't seen your wife and daughter since '49. Thar's a man ez
sez you've been playin' this camp for six months."

There was a dead silence. Then a voice said quite as quietly,--

"That man lies."

It was not the old man's voice. Everybody turned as Henry York slowly
rose, stretching out his six feet of length, and, brushing away the
ashes that had fallen from his pipe upon his breast, deliberately placed
himself beside Plunkett, and faced the others.

"That man ain't here," continued Abner Dean, with listless indifference
of voice, and a gentle pre-occupation of manner, as he carelessly
allowed his right hand to rest on his hip near his revolver. "That man
ain't here; but, if I'm called upon to make good what he says, why, I'm
on hand."

All rose as the two men--perhaps the least externally agitated of them
all--approached each other. The lawyer stepped in between them.

"Perhaps there's some mistake here. York, do you KNOW that the old man
has been home?"

"Yes."

"How do you know it?"

York turned his clear, honest, frank eyes on his questioner, and without
a tremor told the only direct and unmitigated lie of his life. "Becaus