"Tell me, Ed," I asked, more miserable than he, "are you going over to Carmichael to get some more pay for this?" "Maybe, if I did," he replied sullenly, "it'd be some better than it is working for you." "I don't think so--not long. Folks like you aren't worth much. Come, Ed! Did I ever do a mean thing to you? Didn't I give fifteen cents when we hadn't but twenty between us? What were you thinking when you did this dirty piece of business? Just tell me you were drunk when you did it. I would have given you ten times as much as you ever got from them to know you couldn't do it!" [Illustration: "_You have done something the taste of which will never get out of your mouth._"] Then he began to go to pieces and cry, and he told me all I wanted to know. It was a plain case of the poison of envy. I was rich and on top, and he was working for thirty dollars a week for me. His wife, who had always kept a grudge against me for not making up to her in the old days, had taunted him for taking his wages from me. She kept telling him that I did nothing for him, and when she found out about his dealing with Lucas Smith for me, she saw her chance. Somehow Frost got on his track, and evidently they thought his information was worth paying something for. That was the whole story. While we were talking, Slocum slipped out of the room. It was a pitiful scene. "Ed," I said finally, "you must go back to the country. That is the only place for you. You'll grow worse in the city the longer you stay. Your belly's got bigger than your brain, and your heart is tainted at the core. I will start you on a ranch I've got in Texas. Think it over and get out of this place as soon as you can. I'm sorry for you, Ed. For you have done something the taste of which will never get out of your mouth." He left my office without a word, and that was the last I ever saw of him. When he had gone Slocum came back and sat down. "It was a pretty tough thing for Ed to do," he remarked calmly, looking out into the muddy street, where men were hurrying along the pavements. I made no remark, and he added in the same far-off tone of voice: "That's the worst of any piece of crooked business: it breaks up the man you work with. Ed is a rascal now--and he was never that before!" "That's true enough," I assented gloomily. Slocum advised me to leave the city for a while, because should the _Nationalist_ charges be investigated by the Grand Jury, it might be awkward for me. But I refused to leave the city: no matter what happened, I was not the man to run and hide. The Democratic papers made all they could out of the affair, and then after the election it died away. Garretson was reëlected, and that was a kind of vindication for him.