And as for Brant, if she had been an angel of light, preaching repentance and a better mind to the hardened sinner of the mining camps, nothing she could have said or done would have touched him so nearly as this tacit acceptance of his protection. But also it gave him a soul-harrowing glimpse of the bottomless chasm separating the chivalrous gentleman of her maidenly imaginings from one George Brant, late of Silverette and Gaynard’s faro bank. How this clean-hearted young woman would shrink from him if she could but dimly imagine the manner of man he was! There was honest shame and humiliation in the thought; and in so far as these may give a moral uplift, Brant was the better man for the experience. None the less, he was glad when the train slowed into the breakfast station and the demands of the present once more shut the door upon the past and its disquieting reminders. Having a clear field for the run across the station platform, Brant and his charge were the first to reach the dining room, and they had chosen their table and given their order before the other seats were taken. As a matter of course, Brant’s order was filled first, and thereat his vis à vis, a hard-featured man in a linen duster and a close-fitting skullcap, broke forth in remonstrance. “That is the curse of the tip system!” he growled, looking pointedly at Brant and addressing no one in particular. “I object to it on principle, and every self-respecting traveller ought to help put it down.” Brant’s eyelids narrowed and the steel-gray eyes behind them shot back a look that aforetime had quelled more than one wild beast of the gaming tables. But he held his peace, and here the matter might have rested if the irascible fault-finder had not seen the look and accepted it as a challenge. “Yes, sir, I referred to you!” he exploded, hurling the explanation at Brant’s head. “I submit it to the entire company if it is fair for you to monopolize the attention of the servants while the rest of us go hungry?” Now Brant was by nature a very madman of impulse, but the one good thing he had brought out of the hard school of lawlessness was the ability to be fiercely wrathful without showing it. So he said, placably enough: “I am sure you will excuse me if I decline to discuss the question with you. We were the first comers, and my order was given before you sat down.” Here again the matter might have rested, but the hard-featured critic must needs have the last word: “What I said, sir, had no reference to the matter of precedence. What I particularly object to is the shameless subsidizing of the servants.”