"They shore do beat th’ devil," he growled, throwing himself into the vacant chair and lapsing into silence. Tex nodded understandingly. "They do," he indolently agreed, a smile flickering across his face. "Black is white an’ red is green--they’re the worst I’ve ever seen," he extemporized. "They’re intuitive critters, son; an’ don’t you let anybody tell you that intuition hasn’t any warrant for existing. It has. It’s got more warrant than reason. It was flowering long before reason poked its first shoot out of the ground. Reason only runs back a few thousand generations, but intuition goes back to the first cell of nervous tissue--I might qualify that a bit and say before nervous tissue was structurally apart from the rest. Reason starts anew in every life, usually upon a little better foundation--often a poorer one. It is nursed and trained and cultivated an’ when its possessor dies, it dies with him. Not so our venerable friend, intuition. He, or rather she, is cumulative. She is th’ sum of all previous individuals in the life chain of th’ last. She picks up an’ stores away, growing a little each time--an’ while she is vague, an’ can be classified as a ’because,’ or ’I don’t know why,’ she operates steady. Don’t ask me what I know about it, for it has been a long time since I gave any study to things like this. I might guess an’ say that it’s th’ physical changes in th’ thought channels due to experience, or in th’ structure of th’ brain cells or th’ quality of their tissues. Anyway, so far as practicability is concerned, you’ve summed up th’ whole thing: ’They shore do beat th’ devil’." Tommy was looking at him, puzzled and intent; but puzzled intelligently. There is a difference. "With me an’ you, two opposites in thought result in th’ cancellation of one of them. We don’t say of th’ same object: ’This is white, this is black,’ at th’ same time an’ believe ’em both. Th’ words themselves are intelligible; but th’ conception ain’t. We can’t do it. One is chosen an’ th’ other dies. But I won’t bet you that a woman cancels. She may not get a dirty white or a slate gray, but she gets a combination, all right. That’s where intuition’s family tree comes in. No matter how absurd its contentions may be they have force because of th’ impetus coming from age. What did she get out th’ colors for you?" "Yo’re th’ easiest man to talk to that I ever met," said Tommy, wonderingly. "I don’t know how you do it. Why, she got a bright red with a dull green cast--said you was justified, ’but a life’s a life’: an’ then she cried!" Over Tex’s face came a light which only can be compared to the rising sun seen from some lofty peak, for in the radiance there were shadows. *CHAPTER XIII* *OUTCHEATING CHEATERS*