ane with his revolver barrel, and, when a
man came to answer, made him open, and backed out with his revolver in
one hand and his diamonds and money in the other. He does not recall in
any vague way the Red Martin who gave the town a month's smile when he
said, after losing all his money on election, that he had learned never
to bet on anything that could talk, or had less than four legs. That Red
Martin has been dead these many years; perhaps he was no more worthy
than this one who hangs on to life, and bears the name and the disgrace
that his dead youth made inevitable.

How strange it is that a man should wreck himself, and blight those of
his own blood as this man has done! He knew what we all know about life
and its rules. He had been told, as we all are told in a thousand ways,
that bad conduct brings sorrow to the world, and that pain and
wretchedness are the only rewards of that behaviour which men call sin.
And yet there he is, sitting on his hunkers near the stable, with God's
stamp of failure all over his broken, battered body--put there by Red
Martin's own hands. But George Kirwin, who often thinks with a kindlier
spirit than others, says we are Red Martin's partners in iniquity, for
we all lived here with him, maintaining a town that tolerated gambling
and debauchery, and that, in some way, we shall each of us suffer as Red
has suffered, insomuch as each has had his share in a neighbour's shame.

We tell George that he is getting old, though he is still on the bright
side of forty, because he likes to come down town of evenings and hold a
parliament with Henry Larmy and Dan Gregg and Colonel Morrison.
Sometimes they hold it in the office and settle important affairs. A
month ago they settled the immortality of the soul, and the other night,
returning to their former subject, the question came up: "What will
become of Red Martin when he goes to Heaven?" Dan contended that the
poor fellow is carrying around his own little blowpipe hell as he goes
through life. George Kirwin maintained that Red Martin will enter the
next world with the soul that died when his body began to live in
wickedness; that there must have been some imperishable good in him as a
boy, and that Heaven, or whatever we decide to call the next world, must
be full of men and women like Red Martin--some more respectable than
he--whose hell will be the unmasking of their real selves in the world
where we "shall know as we are known." While we w