“That is the way of it, Bob. If you help me play the game this winter, you accomplish two things with tolerable certitude. You will be safe from the Police and those Benton idiots; and you will get to St. Louis in the spring. Montell himself will see to that, when he learns who you are. He knew your father slightly, and he has all of a guttersnipe’s snobbish adulation of wealth and family. So you are doubly safe. On the other hand, if you are minded to work out your own salvation I will share with you what I have, set you in the right direction, and wish you good luck. Don’t be hasty about deciding. Think the thing over.” But I had already made up my mind. How much the lure of a strange land and stirring things to be done bore upon my decision I cannot say. How much, at the moment, George Barreau’s personality dominated me I cannot quite compute. Individual psychology has never been a study of mine, but I know that there is no course of reasoning, no mental action, no emotion, that has not its psychic factors. Whatever these were in my case, I lost sight of them. I think that what influenced me most was his way of putting it man to man, so to speak. Unconsciously that restored to me, in a measure, the self-respect I had nearly lost in those brutal days on the _Moon_, and the skulking and imprisonment which followed. Here was a man before whom I had seen other strong men cringe asking me in a straightforward way for help. I had no wish to refuse; I felt a thrill at the opportunity. For the time I forgot that Montell’s daughter had called him a thief and a murderer, and he had not denied. I took him at his face value, as he took me, and we shook hands on the bargain, and cemented it further with the bottle of port so unwillingly relinquished by Montell. “I’m with you,” said I, “till the last dog is hung. But if I weaken in a pinch, don’t say you weren’t forewarned.” He laughed. “Don’t underestimate yourself. A man doesn’t need to be overloaded with nerve to play a man’s part in this world. In fact, the fellow who hunts trouble for the sake of showing off his nerve, is generally some damned fool with a yellow streak in him that he’s deadly afraid some one may uncover. After all,” he reflected, “there may be nothing more to cope with than the dreary monotony of snowbound days, and nights when the frost bites to the bone. Your part will merely be to keep tab on Mr. Simon Montell when I am not about. He’s afraid of me. If he can’t attain his purpose by underhand methods, he may consider the risk of open hostility too great. But that we cannot foresee. Our problem, now, is to reach the Sicannie River as soon as we can. There we need never fear meeting a scarlet jacket. It stands us in hand to be shy of those gentlemen, for some time to come.” “Amen to that,” I responded sincerely.