A Private Chivalry

WHEN a careful man blunders he is apt to make thorough work of it. If Brant had suspected the use Harding would make of an uninterrupted quarter of an hour with William Langford, it is safe to assume that no preventive, however heroic, would have failed to commend itself to the rescuer; and he should have foreseen. Any tenderfoot of them all would have been less blunt-witted, he told himself afterward in much bitterness of spirit. But that was after the fact. While he was smoking his cigar on the box and tasting some of the aloe dregs of the cup of lapsings, Harding was making the most of his opportunity.

"No, Willie, I can't say when I may be back in Denver. A man with a big mine on his hands can't play marbles all the time, you know. Has to look after his ante or they'll steal him blind."