“I’ve thought of every way I can think of,” she said, after a pause, “and this seems to be the only way.  I just wish it was something I could do myself and not be bringing black guilt on your soul, but maybe God’ll understand.  Maybe it was so that you’d be ready for to-night that He let you learn to be so handy with them.  Sure Ma always said that God can do His work with quare tools; and now, Da, I’ll slip off to bed, and you’ll pretend you’re stealin’ a march on me, and he’ll enjoy himself all the more if he thinks he’s spitin’ me.  Oh, Da, I wish I knew it was right—­maybe it’s ruinin’ your soul I am, puttin’ you up to such wickedness, but I’ll be prayin’ for you as hard as I can.”

Da looked worried.  “Maggie, I don’t know about the prayin’—­I was always able to find the card I needed without bein’ prayed for.”

“Oh, I mean I’ll pray it won’t hurt you.  I wouldn’t interfere with the game, for I don’t know one card from another, and I’m sure the Lord don’t either, but it’s your soul I’m thinkin’ of and worried about.  I’ll slip down with the green box—­there’s more’n a hundred dollars in it.  And now good-bye, Da—­go at him, and God bless you—­and play like the divil!”

Mr. John Corbett slowly folded up the War Cry and placed it in his pocket, and when Maggie brought down the green box with their earnings in it he emptied its contents in his pocket, and then, softly humming to himself, he went into the other room.

The wind raged and the storm roared around the Black Creek Stopping-House all that night, but inside the fire burned bright in the box-stove, and an interested and excited group sat around the table where Rance Belmont and John Corbett played the game!  Peter Rockett, with his eyes bulging from his head, watched his grave employer cut and deal and gather in the stakes, with as much astonishment as if that dignified gentleman had walked head downward on the ceiling.  Yet John Corbett proceeded with the game, as grave and solemn as when he asked a blessing at the table.  Sometimes he hummed snatches of Army tunes, and sometimes Rance Belmont swore softly, and to the anxious ear which listened at the stovepipe-hole above, both sounds were of surpassing sweetness!

CHAPTER XI.

THE BLIZZARD.

When the door closed behind Rance Belmont and Evelyn, Fred sank into a chair with the whole room whirling dizzily around him.  Why had the world gone so suddenly wrong?

His head was quite clear now, and only the throbbing hurt on the back of his head reminded him of Reginald’s cowardly blow.  But his anger against his brothers had faded into apathy in the presence of this new trouble which seemed to choke the very fountains of his being.

One terrible fact smote him with crushing force—­Evelyn had left him and gone with Rance Belmont.  She said she hoped she would never see him again—­that she was done with him—­and her eyes had blazed with anger and hatred—­and she had stepped in between him and the miserable villain whom he would have so dearly loved to have beaten the life out of.