“Well, that’s all there was to it. The stranger, he wouldn’t play the hand, o’ course, but Harris havin’ four sevens, laid for Pete, who just naturally stood pat an’ flashed four tens an’ an ace at the show down. That let Harris out, an’ Pete swatted the stranger till he had to borrow twenty to leave town with. An’ the credit of Arkansas City was saved.” XIV IT WAS A GREAT DEAL “One o’ the commonest failin’s o’ poor fallen humanity is a lack o’ self-control,” said old man Greenhut, as he turned back from the door of his tavern, out of which he had just thrown an unfortunate stranger, and walked around to his place behind the bar rubbing and slapping his hands together, as if to brush off some imaginary taint that might be supposed to have attached to the stranger’s clothes. The stranger, who didn’t seem to be in good health, and was far from being well dressed, had shuffled in a few moments before and walked up to the stove with a deprecatory air, saying nothing to anybody and warming himself in an apologetic fashion as if he realized that he had no right to the heat and good cheer that radiated from the red-hot sides of that comfortable piece of furniture. Nobody said anything to him, and he coughed once or twice, timidly, before he ventured to walk over to the bar and accost the old man. “Squire,” he said, “I am half-sick, an’ I need a glass o’ liquor powerful bad, but I hain’t got any money. Kin you trust me for a drink? I’ll pay ye for it, honest. I hain’t never beat a man out of a cent in my life, an’ I’ll pay, sure. I wouldn’t ask ye for it, on’y I’m reely sick.” The old man looked at him steadily while he was talking, but he answered never a word. Slowly he reached under the bar and the stranger’s face brightened up. He thought the old man was reaching for a bottle. After hesitating a little the old man came out from behind the bar. Seizing the unresisting stranger by the collar he rushed him violently to the door, and half-threw and half-kicked him out. Then breaking the silence for the first time since the stranger’s entrance, he delivered himself of the reflections recorded above as he walked slowly back to his place. He stood there for some minutes, evidently thinking of what he had said, and then, business being slack for the moment, he relighted his cigar and came out again to his favourite seat by the window.