Dr. Duchesne bent over his patient. He was a quick as well as a patiently observing man, and he saw something in Jack's face that no one else had detected. Seeing this he said, "You can go now, at a great risk--the risk of your life." "I'll take it!" said Mr. Hamlin, promptly. "I've been playin' agin odds," he added, with a faint but audacious smile, "for the last six months, and it's no time to draw out now. Go on, tell Pete to pack up and get me ready." "Where are you going?" asked the doctor, quietly, still gazing at his patient. "To!--blank!" said Mr. Hamlin, impulsively. Then recognising the fact that in view of his having travelling companions, some more definite and practicable locality was necessary, he paused a moment, and said, "To the Mission of San Antonio." "Very well," said the doctor, gravely. Strange to say, whether from the doctor's medication, or from the stimulus of some reserved vitality hitherto unsuspected, Mr. Hamlin from that moment rallied. The preparations for his departure were quickly made, and in a few hours he was ready for the road. "I don't want to have anybody cacklin' around me," he said, in deprecation of any leave-taking. "I leave the board, they can go on with the game." Notwithstanding which, at the last moment, Gabriel hung awkwardly and heavily around the carriage in which the invalid was seated. "I'd foller arter ye, Mr. Hamlin, in a buggy," he interpolated, in gentle deprecation of his unwieldy and difficult bulk, "but I'm sorter kept yer with my wife--who is powerful weak along of a pore small baby--about so long--the same not bein' a fammerly man yourself, you don't kinder get the hang of. I thought it might please ye to know that I got bail yesterday for thet Mr. Perkins--ez didn't kill that thar Ramirez--the same havin' killed hisself--ez waz fetched out on the trial, which I reckon ye didn't get to hear. I admire to see ye lookin' so well, Mr. Hamlin, and I'm glad Olly's goin' with ye. I reckon Grace would hev gone too, but she's sorter skary about strangers, hevin' bin engaged these seving years to a young man by the name o' Poinsett ez waz one o' my counsel, and hevin' lately had a row with the same--one o' them lovers' fights--which bein' a young man yourself, ye kin kindly allow for." "Drive on!" imprecated Mr. Hamlin furiously to the driver; "what are you waiting for?" and with the whirling wheels Gabriel dropped off apologetically in a cloud of dust, and Mr. Hamlin sack back exhaustedly on the cushions.