hem better."

"I never missed chances," he replied, simply: "never except twice, and
then--"

"And then?"

"Then it was to give the other fellow a chance."

"Oh!" There was a kind of dubiousness in her tone. He noticed it. "You
can hardly understand, Miss Raglan. Fact is, it was one of those deals
when you can make a million, in a straight enough game; but it comes out
of another man--one, maybe, that you don't know; who is playing just the
same as you are. I have had a lot of sport; but I've never crippled any
one man, when my engine has been dead on him. I have played more against
organisations than single men."

"What was the most remarkable chance you ever had to make a million, and
did not?"

He threw back his head, smiling shrewdly. "When by accident my enemy got
hold of a telegram meant for me. I was standing behind a frosted glass
door, and through the narrow bevel of clear glass I watched him read
it. I never saw a struggle like that. At last he got up, snatched
an envelope, put the telegram inside, wrote my name, and called a
messenger. I knew what was in the message. I let the messenger go, and
watched that man for ten minutes. It was a splendid sight. The telegram
had given him a big chance to make a million or two, as he thought. But
he backed himself against the temptation, and won. That day I could have
put the ball into his wicket; but I didn't. That's a funny case of the
kind."

"Did he ever know?"

"He didn't. We are fighting yet. He is richer than I am now, and at this
moment he's playing a hard game straight at several interests of mine.
But I reckon I can stop him."

"You must get a great deal out of life," she said. "Have you always
enjoyed it so?" She was thinking it would be strange to live in contact
with such events very closely. It was so like adventure.

"Always--from the start."

"Tell me something of it all, won't you?" He did not hesitate.

"I was born in a little place in Maine. My mother was a good woman, they
said--straight as a die all her life. I can only remember her in a
kind of dream, when she used to gather us children about the big
rocking-chair, and pray for us, and for my father, who was away most
of the time, working in the timber-shanties in the winter, and at
odd things in the summer. My father wasn't much of a man. He was
kind-hearted, but shiftless, but pretty handsome for a man from Maine.

"My mother died when I was six years old. Things got bad. I was t