ed.

"Bill Morrison--and yourn?"

"Bergstein."

Morrison leaned forward over the bar and his brow tightened:

"Guess I've hearn of you before--horse-trader, bean't ye?"

"Yes; if you ever want a good horse"--and his small, black eyes
glittered--"let me know."

"Got 'bout all I kin afford," replied Morrison; "twenty to work on
my job now." Again Morrison looked at him; this time from his scrubby
black beard to his dust-covered shoes. "Seems to me I heard your name
before. There was a man by that name that was mixed up in that Jim
Bailey murder. You ain't he, be ye?"

"No--I come from Montreal," replied Bergstein in a more positive tone.
"The name's common enough." Here he opened the black valise stuffed
with business papers and handed Morrison a card.

Morrison looked at it carefully, tucked it in a fly-specked screen
behind the bar, and with a satisfied air said:

"Let's see--you hain't had no supper, hev ye? Supper's most
ready--I'll go and tell the old woman you're here."

"No--I ain't stoppin' for supper," replied Bergstein, paying for his
glass. "I'm going up to Thayor's place now; this feller Holcomb's
expectin' me."

"Suit yourself, friend," returned Morrison, and he pulled down the
heavy shutter screening the array of bottles.

Bergstein left with a brusque good-night and walked slowly up the
road.

He had not told Morrison all he knew. Trading horses was not the Jew's
only business; he was equally adept in buying and selling timber-lands
and the hiring of men. When he was successful--and he was generally
successful--his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than
that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins
ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the
Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the
latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for
sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both had died when he was a child
and from an early age he shifted for himself, made no friends and
needed little sleep and pursued his business with ferocious energy by
night as well as by day. Added to this was a certain secretiveness. He
appeared in localities mysteriously and left them as suddenly. It was
often his habit to walk to unfrequented stations and take his
chances of boarding a train. His movements were carefully planned and
guarded--evidently he did not care to have many of them known.

He was not long in re