brightly lighted town sounds of laughter and fiddling came to him.

Lucky Star City had no suburbs. The whole place had grown up in less than
a year, and, in fact, such buildings as had existed for six months were
known as "old." There was but one street, though a few ambitious
landowners had run up houses in "gardens" at a short but haughty distance
from the "business part"; and at night the town was seen at its best. The
three two-storeyed, verandaed hotels--one painted white, another green,
the third and noisiest not painted at all--blazed with lights. The drug
store, the jewellery store (for there was a jewellery store, and a
prosperous one), the grocery store--combining a large trade in candy--the
post office, and the dry-goods store--where two extremes were made to meet
with a display of hats and shoes in the same window--were every one open
and crowded. Men in shirt-sleeves, and men in khaki, men of almost all
conditions and nations, sat or lounged on the hotel verandas making music
or listening to it, swapping stories and yelling with laughter. Away in
the distance at one end of the long street--which had no pavement but
yellow sand--there was a shooting gallery, and every second or two was
marked off with a shot, or a shout of applause or derision. At the other
end, equally far away from the populous centre of shops, was a variety
theatre, a mere shanty, run up in a day; and as Nick took his way toward
the green-painted hotel he could hear the shrill squalling of a woman's
untrained voice, shrieking out the latest comic song.

"Hello, Nick!" "How go things, High-pockets?" friendly voices saluted
Hilliard as he marched through the cigarette-strewn sand. And he had a
laughing word for each one. Everybody who was anybody had a nickname at
Lucky Star City, and Hilliard was rather pleased with "High-pockets"
--bestowed upon him because of his height and his long straight
legs. "The Dook" was the sobriquet of the person he had come to
see; and it was by this name that Nick inquired for him, gravely, of the
landlord.

The man addressed chuckled. "I guess he's gone over to Meek's to try and
borrow some cash off his dear country-man. I seen him strollin' down that
way. Hope Meek'll fork out. The Dook owes me two weeks' board, and I've
give him notice to pay up or quit. London hotels may hand out free meals
to the nobility and gentry for the sake o' the ad. But this ain't London.
Nope!"

"Is he nobility?" inquired N