re will I find the place known as the Big Tent?"

He laughed with peculiar emphasis.

"If you had mentioned the Big Tent sooner you'd have got no twenty dollars
from me, sir. Not that I've anything against it, understand. It's all
right, everybody goes there; perfectly legitimate. I go there myself. And
you may redeem your trunk to-morrow and be buying champagne."

"I am to meet a friend at the Big Tent," I stiffly explained. "Further
than that I have no business there. I know nothing whatever about it."

"I beg your pardon, sir. No offense intended. The Big Tent is highly
regarded--a great place to spend a pleasant evening. All Benton indulges.
I wish you the best of luck, sir. You are heeled, I see. No one will take
you for a pilgrim." Despite the assertion there was a twinkle in his eye.
"You will find the Big Tent one block and a half down this street. You
cannot miss it."

CHAPTER VII

I GO TO RENDEZVOUS

The hotel lamps were being lighted by the gnome porter. When I stepped
outside twilight had deepened into dusk, the air was almost frosty, and
this main street had been made garish by its nightly illumination.

It was a strange sight, as I paused for a moment upon the plank veranda.
The near vicinity resembled a fair. As if inspired by the freshness and
coolness of the new air the people were trooping to and fro more
restlessly than ever, and in greater numbers. All up and down the street
coal-oil torches or flambeaus, ruddily embossing the heads of the players
and onlookers, flared like votive braziers above the open-air gambling
games; there were even smoked-chimney lamps, and candles, set on
pedestals, signalizing other centers. The walls of the tent
store-buildings glowed spectral from the lights to be glimpsed through
doorways and windows, and grotesque, gigantic figures flitted in
silhouette. While through the interstices between the buildings I might
see other structures, ranging from those of tolerable size to simple wall
tents and makeshift shacks, eerily shadowed.

The noise had, if anything, redoubled. To the exclamations, the riotous
shouts and whoops, the general gay vociferations and the footsteps of a
busy people, the harangues of the barkers, the more distant puffing and
shrieking of the locomotives at the railroad yards, the hammering where
men and boys worked by torchlight, and now and then a revolver shot, there
had been added the inciting music of stringed instruments, cymbals,