How strange it is that a man should wreck himself, and blight those of his own blood as this man has done! He knew what we all know about life and its rules. He had been told, as we all are told in a thousand ways, that bad conduct brings sorrow to the world, and that pain and wretchedness are the only rewards of that behaviour which men call sin. And yet there he is, sitting on his hunkers near the stable, with God's stamp of failure all over his broken, battered body--put there by Red Martin's own hands. But George Kirwin, who often thinks with a kindlier spirit than others, says we are Red Martin's partners in iniquity, for we all lived here with him, maintaining a town that tolerated gambling and debauchery, and that, in some way, we shall each of us suffer as Red has suffered, insomuch as each has had his share in a neighbour's shame. We tell George that he is getting old, though he is still on the bright side of forty, because he likes to come down town of evenings and hold a parliament with Henry Larmy and Dan Gregg and Colonel Morrison. Sometimes they hold it in the office and settle important affairs. A month ago they settled the immortality of the soul, and the other night, returning to their former subject, the question came up: "What will become of Red Martin when he goes to Heaven?" Dan contended that the poor fellow is carrying around his own little blowpipe hell as he goes through life. George Kirwin maintained that Red Martin will enter the next world with the soul that died when his body began to live in wickedness; that there must have been some imperishable good in him as a boy, and that Heaven, or whatever we decide to call the next world, must be full of men and women like Red Martin--some more respectable than he--whose hell will be the unmasking of their real selves in the world where we "shall know as we are known." While we were sitting in judgment on poor Red Martin, in toddled Simon Mehronay, who is visiting in town from New York in the company of the vestal virgin who had, as he expressed it, snatched him as a brand from the burning. Mehronay has been gone from town nearly twenty years, and until they told him he did not know how Red Martin had fallen. When he heard it, Mehronay sighed and tears came into his dear old eyes, as he put his hand on Colonel Morrison's arm and said: "Poor Red! Poor Red! A decent, brave, big-hearted chap! Why, he's taken whisky away from me a dozen times! He's won my money from me to keep it over Saturday night. Why, I'm no better than he is! Only they've caught Red, and they haven't caught me. And when we stand before the judgment-seat, I can tell a damnsight more good things about Red than he can about me. I'm going out to find him and get him a square meal." And so, while we were debating, Mehronay went down the Jericho road looking for the man who was lying there, beaten and bruised and waiting for the Samaritan. XIX "Thirty"