s?" Bill hazarded.

Helen looked around at him in amused admiration. She nodded.

"You're getting too clever for me. You will be thinking for us both
soon."

Bill denied the accusation enthusiastically.

"Never," he exclaimed. And after that he drifted into a lover's
rhapsody of his own inferiority and unworthiness.

Thus, for a while, the more serious cares were set aside for that
brief lover's paradise when two people find their focus filled to
overflowing with that precious Self, which we are told always to deny.
Fortunately human nature does not readily yield to such behests, and
so life is not robbed of its mainspring, and the whole machinery of
human nature is not reduced to a chaotic bundle of useless wheels.

For all Helen's boasted scheming, for all Bill's lack of brilliancy,
these two were just a pair of simple creatures, loyal and honest, and
deeply in love. So they dallied as all true lovers must dally with
those first precious moments which a Divine Providence permits to flow
in full tide but once in a lifetime.

* * * * *

Charlie Bryant was standing at the bar of O'Brien's saloon. One hand
rested on the edge of the counter as though to steady himself. His
eyes were bloodshot, a strange pallor left his features ghastly, and
the combination imparted a subtle appearance of terror which the
shrewd saloonkeeper interpreted in his own fashion as he unfolded his
information, and its deductions.

The bar was quite empty otherwise, and the opportunity had been too
good for O'Brien to miss.

"Say, I was mighty glad to get them kegs the other night safely. But
I'm takin' no more chances. It'll see me through for awhile," he said,
as he refilled Charlie's glass at his own expense. "There's a big play
coming right now, and, if you'll take advice, you'll lie low--desprit
low."

"You mean Fyles--as usual," said Charlie thickly. Then he added as an
afterthought: "To hell with Fyles, and all his damned red-coats."

O'Brien's quick eyes surveyed his half-drunken customer with a shrewd,
contemptuous speculation.

"That sounds like bluff. Hot air never yet beat the p'lice. It needs a
darnation clear head, and big acts, to best Fyles. A half-soused bluff
ain't worth hell room."

Charlie appeared to take no umbrage. His bloodshot eyes were still
fixed upon O'Brien's hard face as he raised his glass with a shaking
hand and drained it.

"I don't need to bluff with no one around