The litter of broken camp was on every hand; broken barrels, piles of boxes, scattered straw, bottles sown as thickly upon the ground as if someone had planted them there in the expectation of reaping a harvest of malt liquors and ardent spirits. Here the depression of a few inches marked where a tent had stood, the earth where the walls had protected it from the beating feet showing a little higher all around; there in the soft ground was the mark of a bar, the vapors of spilled liquors rising sharply in the sun. Bands of boys and camp-dregs, of whom he might have been one from his appearance, scraped and dug among the débris, searching for what might have been dropped from careless or drunken hands and trampled out of sight. That they were rewarded frequently was attested by the sharp exclamations and triumphant cries. Across from where he stood was the site of a large place, its littered leavings either already worked over or not yet touched. No one scratched and peered among its trash-heaps or clawed over its reeking straw. Dr. Slavens took possession of the place, turning the loose earth and heaped accumulations with his feet as he rooted around like a swine. It must have been worked over and exhausted, he concluded, for it turned no glint of silver to the sun. Persisting, he worked across the space which the tent had covered, and sat down on a box to rest. The sun was low; the tops of two tall, round tents across the way came between it and his eyes when he sat down. That was the luck of some people, thought he, to arrive too late. The pay-dirt was all worked out; the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned. No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote Marcus Aurelius. The moment just passed into the score of time's count, the moment which the hand of the clock trembles over, a hair's breadth yet to go--these are no man's to claim. One is gone forever; the other may mark the passing of his soul. Only this moment, this throb of the heart, this half-drawn breath, is a living man's to claim. The beggar has it; the monarch can command no more. Poor as he was, Dr. Slavens thought, smiling as he worked his foot, into the trampled dust, he was as rich in life's allotment as the best. The sole of his cut and broken shoe struck some little thing which resisted, then turned up white beneath his eye. Broken porcelain, or bone fragment, it appeared. He would have pushed it aside with his toe; but just then it turned, showing the marking of a die. Here was a whimsical turn of circumstance, thought he. An outcast die for a broken man, recalling by its presence the high games of chance which both of them had played in their day and lost, perhaps. It was a little, round-cornered die, its spots marked deep and plain. As it lay in his hand it brought reminiscences of Hun Shanklin, for it was of his pattern of dice, and his size, convenient for hiding between the fingers of his deceptive hand.