"Would you do anything for a friend in need, Sammie?" asked the visitor at length, with a strong emphasis upon the "anything." "To be sure. Speak out." "Then laugh." "Laugh?" "Yes, laugh." "Laugh? What about?" "Anything or nothing--but laugh. I have not heard a suspicion of a laugh in weeks. I have been prowling around in a valley of dry bones, and to save my soul I cannot find my way out. I thought I had just begun the ascent of a slope where smiles are occasionally seen, when the hope was shattered by the vulgar familiarity of a mob belonging to the trade." Dr. Sammie listened to the rather unusual remarks of his friend, and as he recounted the day's experiences in his own original way the amused look on his face drew itself into definite shape around his mouth, and, when Allison had delivered himself of something unusual in the way of a tirade on dive-keepers, the climax had been reached, and the listener rested his head against the back of his chair and laughed in a manner sufficiently hearty to have satisfied the request of his friend. "Soured on the fraternity, have you?" he asked. Gilbert Allison slowly raised himself to a sitting posture and, with an elbow resting on either knee, transferred his study from the ceiling pattern to that of the carpet. He did not answer the question. "Crowley died," he at length observed. "Yes--and I should think you would be the man to be glad. I imagine the after feeling must be anything but pleasant when one has for years helped fit a fellow creature for the gallows." Gilbert Allison frowned between his hands and spoke sharply. "It is a legal business," he said. "Legal? Yes, legal--but you have sense enough to know that if it is legal for you to sell, it must be legal for some other fellow to buy; and if some other fellow spends his money for liquor he had the right to drink it, and you can hardly be unreasonable enough to hold a man responsible for what he does when the lining has been eaten out of his stomach and his brain soaked with alcohol. Such a man is a legal murderer, and the custom that breeds him should take care of the finished production. "Mind you, I am not giving a temperance lecture; that is out of my line. But it has always seemed to me to be a rotten sort of justice that hangs a man for doing what the government gives him a license to do." Mr. Allison looked up suddenly. "Do you suppose, Sammie, that Deacon Brown knows the Traffic as it is--as we have seen it?" "His church machinery grinds out resolutions annually of such a warlike nature that I am inclined to believe he does," said the doctor grimly. "He has been in every political caucus that I have, for the last five years and has voted as I have from constable to President. I have voted for the interests of the Trade. What has he been voting for?" demanded Allison.