Hede, the dapper, good-looking Scandinavian, touched his glossy straw hat respectfully. It was a piece of luck that his master had not planned a motor trip instead of a tour afoot. For a month, after to-night, his time was his own. His quarter's wages were in his pocket, and he slapped the wad with satisfaction as he sauntered off to the bowling-alley. The study was pitch-dark, and Rummy halted on the threshold with a low, ominous growl as Harry fumbled for the electric switch. As he found and pressed it and the place flooded with light, he saw a figure there--the figure of a man who had been sitting alone--beside the empty hearth, who rose, shrinking back from the sudden brilliancy. It was Hugh Stires. CHAPTER X THE GAME Harry Sanderson stared at the apparition with a strange feeling, like rising from the dead. There flashed into his mind the reflection he had seen once in the mirror above the mantel--the face on which fell the amber ray from the chapel window, shining through the figure of the unrepentant thief--the face that had seemed so like his own! The likeness, however, was not so startling now. The aristocratic features were ravaged like a nicked blade. Dissipation, exposure, shame and unbridled passion had each set its separate seal upon the handsome countenance. Hugh's clothes were shabby-genteel and the old slinking grace of wearing them was gone. A thin beard covered his chin, and his shifty look, as he turned it first on Harry and then nervously over his shoulder, had in it a hunted dread, a dogging terror, constant and indefinable. From bad to worse had been a swift descent for Hugh Stires. The wave of feeling ebbed. Harry drew the window-curtains, swung a shade before the light, and motioned to the chair. "Sit down," he said. Hugh looked his old friend in the face a moment, then his unsteady glance fell to the white carnation in his lapel as he said: "I suppose you wonder why I have come here." Harry did not answer the implied question. His scrutiny was deliberate, critical and inquiring. "What have you been doing the last year?" he asked. "A little of everything," replied Hugh. "I ran a bucket-shop with Moreau in Sacramento for a while. Then I went over in the mining country. I took up a claim at Smoky Mountain--that's worth something, or may be sometime." "Why did you leave it?" Hugh touched his parched lips with his tongue--again that nervous, sidelong look, that fearful glance over his shoulder. "I had no money to work it. I had to live. Besides, I'm tired of the whole thing." The backward glance, the look of dread, were tangible tokens. Harry translated them: "You are not telling the truth," he said shortly. "What have you _done_?" Hugh flinched, but he made sullen answer: "Nothing. What should I have done?" "That is what I am now inquiring of myself," said Harry. "Your face is a book for any one to read. I see things written on it, Hugh--things that tell a story of wrong-doing. You are afraid."