ck Inwood insisted.

"And I have told you I've five hundred that says it's not in that paper,"
Pentfield answered, at the same time throwing a heavy sack of dust on the
table.

"I am sorry to take your money," was the retort, as Inwood thrust the
newspaper into Pentfield's hand.

Pentfield saw, though he could not quite bring himself to believe.
Glancing through the headline, "Young Lochinvar came out of the North,"
and skimming the article until the names of Mabel Holmes and Corry
Hutchinson, coupled together, leaped squarely before his eyes, he turned
to the top of the page. It was a San Francisco paper.

"The money's yours, Inwood," he remarked, with a short laugh. "There's
no telling what that partner of mine will do when he gets started."

Then he returned to the article and read it word for word, very slowly
and very carefully. He could no longer doubt. Beyond dispute, Corry
Hutchinson had married Mabel Holmes. "One of the Bonanza kings," it
described him, "a partner with Lawrence Pentfield (whom San Francisco
society has not yet forgotten), and interested with that gentleman in
other rich, Klondike properties." Further, and at the end, he read, "It
is whispered that Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson will, after a brief trip east
to Detroit, make their real honeymoon journey into the fascinating
Klondike country."

"I'll be back again; keep my place for me," Pentfield said, rising to his
feet and taking his sack, which meantime had hit the blower and came back
lighter by five hundred dollars.

He went down the street and bought a Seattle paper. It contained the
same facts, though somewhat condensed. Corry and Mabel were indubitably
married. Pentfield returned to the Opera House and resumed his seat in
the game. He asked to have the limit removed.

"Trying to get action," Nick Inwood laughed, as he nodded assent to the
dealer. "I was going down to the A. C. store, but now I guess I'll stay
and watch you do your worst."

This Lawrence Pentfield did at the end of two hours' plunging, when the
dealer bit the end off a fresh cigar and struck a match as he announced
that the bank was broken. Pentfield cashed in for forty thousand, shook
hands with Nick Inwood, and stated that it was the last time he would
ever play at his game or at anybody's else's.

No one knew nor guessed that he had been hit, much less hit hard. There
was no apparent change in his manner. For a week he went about his work
much as he