“Maybe it ain't your way, and maybe it ain't the best way, but it suits me bully. I can always get enough to eat by going and asking some one for it, and you can't beat that. No, sir. You know durn well you can't!” becoming argumentative. “It just makes me sick to think of paying for things like vittles and clothes. A feller's got to have clothes, anyhow, ain't he? You know mighty well he has, or he'll get pinched, and supposing I was to earn a lot of money, even as much as a dollar a day, I'd have to spend every blamed cent to live. One day I'd work, and then the next I'd swaller what I'd worked for. Where's the sense in that? And I'd have all sorts of ornery worries for fear I'd lose my job.” A look of wistful yearning overspread his face. “Just you give me the hot days that's coming, when a feller's warm clean through and sweats in the shade, and I won't ask for no money. You can have it all!” That night, when he left him, Roger Oakley carefully locked the door and pocketed the key, and the helpless wretch on the bed, despairing and miserable, and cut off from all earthly hope, turned his face to the white wall and sobbed aloud. CHAPTER IX THEY were standing on the street corner before the hotel. Oakley had just come up-town from the office. He was full of awkward excuses and apologies, but Mr. Emory cut them short. “I suppose I've a right to be angry at the way you've avoided us, but I'm not. On the contrary, I'm going to take you home to dinner with me.” If Dan find consulted his preferences in the matter, he would have begged off, but he felt he couldn't, without giving offence; so he allowed the doctor to lead him away, but he didn't appear as pleased or as grateful as he should have been at this temporary release from the low diet of the American House. Miss Emory was waiting for her father on the porch. An errand of hers had taken him downtown. She seemed surprised to see Oakley, but graciously disposed towards him. While he fell short of her standards, he was decidedly superior to the local youth with whom she had at first been inclined to class him. Truth to tell, the local youth fought rather shy of the doctor's beautiful daughter. Mr. Burt Smith, the gentlemanly druggist and acknowledged social leader, who was much sought after by the most exclusive circles in such centres of fashion as Buckhorn and Harrison, had been so chilled by her manner when, meeting her on the street, he had attempted to revive an acquaintance which dated back to their childhood, that he was a mental wreck for days afterwards, and had hardly dared trust himself to fill even the simplest prescription.