"But--I--can't--see--her just now," said Gabriel, with a voice that for the first time during their interview faltered in its accents. "Nor need you," responded the lawyer, quickly. "Trust that to me. _I_ will see her, and you shall afterwards. You need not fear I will prejudice your case. Give me the address! Quick!" he added, as the sound of footsteps and voices approaching the room, came from the hall. Gabriel did as he requested. "Now one word," he continued hurriedly, as the footsteps halted at the door. "Yes," said Gabriel. "As you value your life and Olly's happiness, hold your tongue." Gabriel nodded with cunning comprehension. The door opened to Mr. Jack Hamlin, diabolically mischievous, self-confident and audacious! With a familiar nod to Maxwell he stepped quickly before Gabriel and extended his hand. Simply, yet conscious of obeying some vague magnetic influence, Gabriel reached out his own hand and took Jack's white, nervous fingers in his own calm, massive grasp. "Glad to see you, pard!" said that gentleman, showing his white teeth and reaching up to clap his disengaged hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Glad to see you, old boy,--even if you have cut in and taken a job out of my hands that I was rather lyin' by to do myself. Sooner or later I'd have fetched that Mexican--if you hadn't dropped into my seat and taken up my hand. Oh, it's all right, Mack!" he said, intercepting the quick look of caution that Maxwell darted at his client, "don't do that. We're all friends here. If you want me to testify, I'll take my oath that there hasn't been a day this six months that that infernal hound, Ramirez, wasn't jest pantin' to be planted in his tracks! I can hardly believe I ain't done it myself." He stopped, partly to enjoy the palpable uneasiness of Maxwell, and perhaps in some admiration of Gabriel's physique. Maxwell quickly seized this point of vantage. "You can do your friend here a very great service," he said to Jack, lowering his voice as he spoke. Jack laughed. "No, Mack, it won't do! They wouldn't believe me! There ain't judge or jury you could play that on!" "You don't understand me," said Maxwell, laughing a little awkwardly. "I didn't mean that, Jack. This man was going to Sacramento to see his little sister"---- "Go on," said Jack, with much gravity; "of course he was. I know that. 'Dear brother, dear brother, come home with me now!' Certainly. So'm I. Goin' to see an innocent little thing 'bout seventeen years old, blue eyes and curly hair! Always go there once a week. Says he must come! Says she'll"----he stopped in the full tide of his irony, for, looking up, he caught a glimpse of Gabriel's simple, troubled face and sadly reproachful eyes. "Look here," said Jack, turning savagely on Maxwell, "what are you talking about anyway?"