nted
by half a dozen rude openings in the mountain-side, with the heaped-up
debris of rock and gravel before the mouth of each. They gave very
little evidence of engineering skill or constructive purpose, or indeed
showed anything but the vague, successively abandoned essays of their
projector. To-day they served another purpose, for as the sun had heated
the little cabin almost to the point of combustion, curling up the long
dry shingles, and starting aromatic tears from the green pine beams,
Tommy led Johnson into one of the larger openings, and with a sense of
satisfaction threw himself panting upon its rocky floor. Here and there
the grateful dampness was condensed in quiet pools of water, or in
a monotonous and soothing drip from the rocks above. Without lay the
staring sunlight,--colorless, clarified, intense.

For a few moments they lay resting on their elbows in blissful
contemplation of the heat they had escaped. "Wot do you say," said
Johnson, slowly, without looking at his companion, but abstractly
addressing himself to the landscape beyond,--"wot do you say to two
straight games fur one thousand dollars?"

"Make it five thousand," replied Tommy, reflectively, also to the
landscape, "and I'm in."

"Wot do I owe you now?" said Johnson, after a lengthened silence.

"One hundred and seventy-five thousand two hundred and fifty dollars,"
replied Tommy, with business-like gravity.

"Well," said Johnson, after a deliberation commensurate with the
magnitude of the transaction, "ef you win, call it a hundred and eighty
thousand, round. War's the keerds?"

They were in an old tin box in a crevice of a rock above his head. They
were greasy and worn with service. Johnson dealt, albeit his right hand
was still uncertain,--hovering, after dropping the cards, aimlessly
about Tommy, and being only recalled by a strong nervous effort. Yet,
notwithstanding this incapacity for even honest manipulation, Mr.
Johnson covertly turned a knave from the bottom of the pack with such
shameless inefficiency and gratuitous unskilfulness, that even Tommy was
obliged to cough and look elsewhere to hide his embarrassment. Possibly
for this reason the young gentleman was himself constrained, by way of
correction, to add a valuable card to his own hand, over and above the
number he legitimately held.

Nevertheless, the game was unexciting, and dragged listlessly. Johnson
won. He recorded the fact and the amount with a stub of pencil an