on few and slight. Samuel, returning from his visits to
the coast, had usually been too full of his own schemes to furnish any
satisfactory details of Jack and his wife. William dropped his
plumb-line in a new spot where he fancied the water would prove shallow.

"You lived off her, didn't you, until you had lived up all she had? The
gospel didn't neglect her; she got her share of the punishment."

"Look here, Will, you mustn't make me laugh like that! You know I used
to think I understood human nature, but I never started with that woman.
I did live at her expense,--I had to,--and she stood for it until I got
to hanging round the saloons too much. She used to pay my dues in the
club, damned if she didn't, until I got fired for too much poker in the
chamber over the gate. I must say she was a good sport: as a fair-minded
man, I've got to admit that. And she swung the lash over me--never laid
it on, but made it sizz--whistle--till I'd duck and sniffle; and she did
exactly what she pleased without caring a damn whether I liked it or
not! By George, I knew she was a wonder when I took her off Kirkwood's
hands, but she wasn't wonderful in just the way I thought she'd be. That
was where the joke came in. And she made people like her; she could do
that; and she got on, so that wherever she could go without me she was
welcome. That was after people got sorry for her because she was hooked
up to me; but most of 'em, I guess, liked her on her own account. A
queer development, Will. For the past five years I've just been a piece
of furniture, to be dusted and moved occasionally like an old
rocking-chair that gets into a house, nobody knows exactly how, and is
shoved around, trying corners where it won't be noticed much, until it
winds up in the garret. But after all the corners had been tried,--she
didn't have any garret; we lived mostly in hotels and flats,--I was
gradually worked out on the second-hand man's wagon, and here I am."

"She kept her money, then?" asked William with assumed indifference.

"Will," said Jack with a mockingly confidential air, leaning forward on
the table, "after the first two or three years I never knew whether she
had a cent or not, that's the straight of it. Considering that she had
thrown away her reputation like an old shoe just for me, and that we
lived along under the same roof, that was the most astonishing thing of
all. She began by handing me out a hundred now and then when I was
broke; the