ow on his hat, and from there
felt his way to the front. At the same time he decided that there was
going to be something doing presently, if Mart's manner meant anything at
all. Mart was a peaceable soul, and in the approaching crisis Luck knew
he would climb hurriedly upon the fence of neutrality and stay there; and
Luck could fight or climb a tree as he chose.

They went outside, and Luck turned his eyes sidewise and took a look at
Bently Brown. He measured him mentally from pigskin puttees to rakish,
stiff brimmed Stetson with careful dimples in the crown and a leather
hatband stamped with horses' heads and his initials. In a picture, Luck
would have cast Bently Brown, costume and all, for a comedy mining
engineer or something of that sort. You know the type: He arrives on the
stage that is held up, and is always in the employ of the monied octopus,
and the cowboys who pursue and capture the bandits have fun afterwards
with the engineer,--so much fun that he crawls out of an up-stairs window
in the night and departs hastily and forever from that place. You are
perfectly familiar with the character, I am sure.

Luck, after that swift, comprehensive glance, was not greatly alarmed. In
that he made his greatest blunder. He should have reckoned with the
wounded vanity of the little author who believes himself great. He should
have reminded himself that Bently Brown was not a comedy mining engineer,
but that touchiest of all mortals, the nearly successful author. He
should have taken warning from the stiff-necked, stiff-backed gait of
Bently Brown on the short walk to the office. He should have read danger
in the blinking lids of his pale eyes, and in his self-conscious manner
of looking straight before him.

In the office, then, luck basely deserted one Luck Lindsay, and left him
to fight a losing battle. For Bently Brown was incensed, insulted, and
outraged over the manner in which _The Soul of Littlefoot Law_ had been
filmed. The story had been caricatured out of all semblance to its
original self. Littlefoot Law had been shown as having no soul whatever.
Instead of being permitted to make the final, supreme sacrifice of his
life for the honor of his enemy,--which would have revealed to the
audience his possession of a clean white soul in spite of his bad
character,--he had been made out a little fiend who would shoot you on
the slightest provocation. The girl had been thrust into the background,
and the hero had be