th you."

"It's dangerous," explained Orde. "You're likely to get slugged."

"I can stand it if you can," returned Newmark.

"I doubt it," said Orde grimly. "However, it's your funeral. Come on, if
you want to."

McNeill's lower story was given over entirely to drinking. A bar ran
down all one side of the room. Dozens of little tables occupied the
floor. "Pretty waiter-girls" were prepared to serve drinks at these
latter--and to share in them, at a commission. The second floor was a
theatre, and the third a dance-hall. Beneath the building were still
viler depths. From this basement the riverman and the shanty boy
generally graduated penniless, and perhaps unconscious, to the street.
Now, your lumber-jack did not customarily arrive at this stage without
more or less lively doings en route; therefore McNeill's maintained a
force of fighters. They were burly, sodden men, in striking contrast to
the clean-cut, clear-eyed rivermen, but strong in their experience and
their discipline. To be sure, they might not last quite as long as their
antagonists could--a whisky training is not conducive to long wind--but
they always lasted plenty long enough. Sand-bags and brass knuckles
helped some, ruthless singleness of purpose counted, and team work
finished the job. At times the storm rose high, but up to now McNeill
had always ridden it.

Orde and his men entered the lower hall, as though sauntering in without
definite aim. Perhaps a score of men were in the room. Two tables of
cards were under way--with a great deal of noisy card-slapping that
proclaimed the game merely friendly. Eight or ten other men wandered
about idly, chaffing loudly with the girls, pausing to overlook the card
games, glancing with purposeless curiosity at the professional gamblers
sitting quietly behind their various lay-outs. It was a dull evening.

Orde wandered about with the rest, a wide, good-natured smile on his
face.

"Start your little ball to rolling for that," he instructed the roulette
man, tossing down a bill. "Dropped again!" he lamented humorously.
"Can't seem to have any luck."

He drifted on to the crap game.

"Throw us the little bones, pardner," he said. "I'll go you a five on
it."

He lost here, and so found himself at the table presided over by the
three-card monte men. The rest of his party, who had according to
instructions scattered about the place, now began quietly to gravitate
in his direction.

"What kind of a lay-o