re was a peculiar earnestness in his voice as he spoke that was very
convincing, and as he rose to go out, I meekly said,

"What's your name, mister?"

"Bill Bradley," he answered with a queer smile. "Now don't you ask any
more questions to-night," and with that he was gone.

I went to bed almost sick from my exposure and lack of food, and just as
the old sand man of childhood's happy days began to sprinkle his grains
in my eyes, I heard, way off in the distance, a peculiar click and a
drawling voice calling off some numbers. "Four." "Sixteen."
"Thirty-three." "Seventy-eight." "Ten." "Twenty-six," and then, a great
shout arose and some one called out "KENO." Ah! I was near a gambling
house, but I was too tired to care, nature asserted herself, and I
gently crossed the river into the land of Nod.

The next morning I was really sick with a high fever, and when Bill came
in I was well nigh loony.

"Hello," he said, "this won't do. Tom, I say, you Tom, go and tell
Doctor Bailey I want him here quick. D--n quick. Do you hear?" and black
Tom answered, "Yas, suh."

To be brief, I was three weeks on my back, and bluff old Bill Bradley
nursed me like a loving mother would a sick child. Day and night he hung
over me, never a thing did I need but what he procured for me, and one
day after the fever had left me and I was sitting up by an open window,
I said,

"Mr. Bradley, what do you do for a living?"

"Boy," he replied with a flushed face, "I am sorry you asked that
question, but sooner or later you would have heard it and I'd a great
deal rather tell you about it myself. I'm a gambler and these three
rooms adjoin my place which is called the "Three Nines," and then he
told me the story of his life. He was a son of a fine Connecticut
family, a graduate of Harvard, and in his day had been a very able young
lawyer with brilliant prospects, but one night, he went out with a crowd
of roystering chaps, the lie was passed, and--it was the old story,--he
came to Texas for a refuge. The great civil war was just over, the
country in a chaotic state, and there he had remained ever since. Thrown
with wild, uncouth men, and being reckless in the extreme, he opened a
gambling house.

"Why did you take this great interest in me?" I asked.

"Look here, young chap, you are altogether too inquisitive. I've got an
old father and mother way up in Ball Brooke, Connecticut, whose hearts
have been broken by my actions, and when I saw you i