p and stack for stack. Your confidence is not entirely
reassuring to me, and yet perhaps I should tell you beforehand that
I've always thought I could play this game half way well myself.'"

Fat Joe rose and crossed to the table for a match.

"Now wasn't that meeting me half way?" he continued, when he was seated
again. "Wasn't it neatly done? Why, for a moment I was most ashamed
to go through with it. I wouldn't have, only he sat there, smilin' so
easy and confident. But we played. We played until daylight came
around. And accordin' to the way he scored it, just before we went
down to the works in the morning, he didn't have a drink comin' to him
for the next forty-eight hours! I play a real involved and scientific
game, Steve--but that ain't what I'm drivin' at. When we'd got
done--when we'd finished--I tried to make him take the glass that had
been comin' to him at nine. And he needed it, don't doubt that. He
needed it and could have had it, for I made it just as easy as anybody
could. . . . Steve, he ain't had a drink since that first night. That
was what I meant when I spoke about him being what they call a
thoroughbred."

They sat for a time in silence after Joe had finished.

"Pride!" Stephen O'Mara exploded softly. "Pride! And Garry thinks his
is dead; he thinks he has killed it himself. But it was there on his
face to-night, too, laughing up at me, Joe, just as it did at
you--laughing at me, all amused at itself, out of that crooked smile of
his. And it'll never die. It'll live as long as he does!"

He looked down at the gun on his knee.

"That's all, Joe?"

Fat Joe cleared his throat.

"I--I gave him a job the next morning," lamely. "We seemed to be
getting along together fine so I---- Shucks, I was just afraid to have
him go! That's the flat truth of it. And you told me to keep him, if
I could. So I set him to checking up the stock in the storeroom and
put him on keepin' time for the squad up here. He's drawin' eighteen a
week, Steve. Was that all right? You were figurin' on keeping him
here?"

And then Joe Morgan saw Steve's eyes light up. He saw a swift
something flash out from within, which, once or twice before in the
years of their friendship, had set his face to burning.

"Joe," Steve exclaimed, "you're right about that matter of family
trees. I know a man right now who doesn't have to go back one minute
in his pedigree to prove that he's a gentleman. I've left s