the court with the warden as I came in."

There is a limit to human endurance, either of sorrow or of joy. I got
up and tried to walk with Benedict to the cell door, which had been left
standing open. I remember catching at the big lawyer's arm, and then the
world went black before my eyes. And that is all I do remember.

* * * * * *

We held our council of war--the final one in the long series--late in the
evening of the day of climaxes in the sitting-room of a Hotel Buckingham
suite, Benedict, Barrett and I. Barrett had arrived just as we were
sitting down to dinner, having hurried east as soon as he could be spared
at Cripple Creek.

"They are all in, down and out," was Barrett's summing-up of the
situation, after he had heard Benedict's story. And then: "It's up to
you, Jimmy"--looking away from me. "You owe those two old men and their
scamp of a lawyer a pretty long score, and I guess you'll be wanting to
pay it."

"I do!" I gritted. In a flash all the injustice I had suffered at the
hands of Abel Geddis and Abner Withers and Cyrus Whitredge piled in upon
me and there was no room in my heart for anything but retaliation.

Benedict clipped and lighted a cigar, and Barrett sat back in his chair
and stared at the gas-fixture in the center of the ceiling.

"I can't blame you much, Jimmie," he offered. "I guess maybe, if the
shoe were on my foot, I'd want to give them the limit. And yet----"

"There isn't any 'and yet'," I cried out.

"Perhaps not; but I don't know, Jimmie. If I were going to be the father
of Polly's children, as you are, I--well, I don't believe I'd care to
hand down that sort of a legacy to the children; a legacy of hatred--even
a just hatred--gorged and surfeited on the thumb-screwing of two old men.
Whitredge will get what is coming to him; the Bar Association will see to
that. But these two old misers who are already tottering on the edge of
the grave----"

"They have robbed me of my good name, and they have robbed us all of our
good money!" I cut in rancorously.

At this, Benedict, who had been saying little, put in his word.

"I saw Whitredge an hour ago. He has been wiring Geddis and Withers--to
tell them that the game is up. He says he supposes he will have to take
his own medicine, but he asked me to intercede for the two old men. They
have wired their Colorado attorneys to withdraw the Lawrenceburg suit and
to lift the injunction, and