The gambler raised his own hat. A close observer would have noticed a troubled, anxious gleam in his eye as he turned to retrace his steps in the direction of the square. It was his custom to saunter slowly when traversing the streets of the town, as one who produces his own importance and enjoys it leisurely. He never hurried. He loitered rather more gracefully when walking than when standing still. But now he strode along briskly,--in fact, with such lively decision that for once in his life he appeared actually to be going somewhere. As he rounded the corner and came in sight of the jail, he directed a fixed, consuming glare upon the barred windows; a quite noticeable scowl settled upon his ordinarily unruffled brow,--the scowl of one searching intently, even apprehensively. He was troubled. His composure was sadly disturbed. Kenneth Gwynne had given him something to think about,--and the more he thought about it the faster he walked. He was perspiring quite freely and he was a little short of breath when he flung open the door and entered his "den of iniquity" down by the river. He took in at a glance the three men seated at a table in a corner of the somewhat commodious "card-room." One of them was dealing "cold hands" to his companions. A fourth man, his dealer, was leaning against the window frame, gazing pensively down upon the slow-moving river. Two of the men at the table were newcomers in town. They had come up on the _Revere_ and they had already established themselves in his estimation as "skeletons"; that is, they had been picked pretty clean by "buzzards" in other climes before gravitating to his "boneyard." He considered himself a good judge of men, and he did not like the looks of this ill-favoured pair. He had made up his mind that he did not want them hanging around the "shanty"; men of that stripe were just the sort to give the place a bad name! One of them had recalled himself to Barry Lapelle the night before; said he used to work for a trader down south or somewhere. Without the ceremony of a knock on the door, Mr. Trentman entered a room at the end of the shanty, and there he found Lapelle reclining on a cot. Two narrow slits in a puffed expanse of purple grading off to a greenish yellow indicated the position of Barry's eyes. The once resplendent dandy was now a sorry sight. "Say," began Trentman, after he had closed the door, "I want to know just how things stand with you and Martin Hawk. No beating about the bush, Barry. I want the truth and nothing else." Barry raised himself on one elbow and peered at his host. "What are you driving at, Jack?" he demanded, throatily. "Are you mixed up with him in this stock-running business?" "Well, that's a hell of a question to ask a--" "It's easy to answer. Are you?" "Certainly not,--and I ought to put a bullet through you for asking such an insulting question."