The Tenderfoots

AFTER he had rued his bargain with the Jew second-hand man -- paying a stiff forfeit for the privilege -- and had reëstablished himself in his rooms in the Alamo, Philip slipped back into the drifting current which had been only momentarily arrested by the Mona Connaghey episode, turning day into night and night into day, gambling a little, drinking a little, assiduously avoiding the few daylight friends he had made, and adding nightly to a different and more numerous collection, some of whom were grateful for the largesse he scattered, while others regarded him only as a soft-hearted fool to be played upon and cozened out of his money as occasion might offer.

It was at this time that Middleton, the fat-faced railroad clerk, appealed to him for help, and Philip heard the appeal with the tolerant, half-amused smile which aptly mirrored his changed point of view. A younger brother of Middleton's had recently joined the rush to the golden West, and Middleton had secured him a railroad clerkship in the freight station. So far, so good; but almost immediately, it seemed, the boy had been caught in the wide-spreading net of dissipation and was in a fair way to be ruined.