“Oh, be still! In the first place the government doesn’t hire you. _I_ hire you, and I pay you about twice what I could get real help for. If I paid you what you were worth you would owe me money every Saturday night. But you are my half-brother--more shame to me--and so-- Oh, well, never mind! We won’t argue about that. You say you weren’t gamblin’. You were playin’ cards for money, weren’t you?” “Why--why, I don’t know’s you’d call it money. Some of the fellows there seemed to think that heavin’ cards back and forth across the table for nothin’ was kind of dull work, so they figgered ’twould be better to have a little mite _on_ the cards. Say a cent a point, or somethin’ like that, you understand.” “Yes, yes!” sharply. “I understand well enough. A cent a point! And you without money enough in your pocket to buy tobacco! How much have you won since these interestin’ games got goin’?” Millard fidgeted. “We-el,” he confessed, “I--well, you see, Reliance, I haven’t really won much of anything, as you might say. I have had the darnedest streak of bad luck. All the boys say it’s as bad a streak as they ever saw.” “Um. I see. Well, how much have you lost?” “Eh? Lost?... We-ll, I figger I’m out about eleven dollars and eighty-one cents just now. Course the luck is bound to turn any minute. All the fellers say it is and they keep tellin’ me to stick right along till it does.” “Yes,” sarcastically, “I guess likely they do. I should think they would. The longer you stick the more they can stick you. You have lost about twelve dollars. Why, look here, Millard Clark; where did you get twelve dollars to pay gamblin’ debts with?” Mr. Clark tried to answer, but any adequate answer was beyond his imagining just then. Reliance did not wait long. “I see,” she said, scornfully. “I see. It is plain enough now. You didn’t pay. You owe that crowd the twelve dollars and that was what sent you chasin’ at Foster Townsend’s heels. You happened to see Bob and the Covell man on the lower road that night--and if you had been in your bed at home here where you belonged, instead of gamblin’ with the town riff-raff until two in the mornin’, you wouldn’t have seen them--you saw them and, knowin’ how Cap’n Foster hates any of Elisha Cook’s family you-- Oh, my soul! You expected Foster would _pay_ you for what you had to tell him. You were goin’ to get your twelve dollars out of him.... That’s enough from you. Go to bed!” “But, but, Reliance,” desperately. “I--I-- Oh, you’re all wrong. I wasn’t cal’atin’ to ask Cap’n Foster to pay me. I--well, I thought maybe, considerin’ that I’d been kind enough to tell him what he’d ought to know, and what I hadn’t told another soul, I thought maybe he’d lend me a little somethin’. I was goin’ to pay him back.”