“Well, now we come to the crookedest bit of work I ever been guilty of, though first telling you about Mr. Burchell Daggett, an Eastern society man from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that had come to Red Gap that spring to be assistant cashier in the First National, through his uncle having stock in the thing.  He was a very pleasant kind of youngish gentleman, about thirty-four, I reckon, with dark, parted whiskers and gold eyeglasses and very good habits.  He took his place among our very best people right off, teaching the Bible class in the M.E.  Sabbath-school and belonging to the Chamber of Commerce and the City Beautiful Association, of which he was made vice-president, and being prominent at all functions held in our best homes.  He wasn’t at all one of them that lead a double life by stopping in at the Family Liquor Store for a gin fizz or two after work hours, or going downtown after supper to play Kelly pool at the Temperance Billiard Parlours and drink steam beer, or getting in with the bunch that gathers in the back room of the Owl Cigar Store of an evening and tells these here suggestive stories.  Not that he was hide-bound.  If he felt the need for a shot of something he’d go into the United States Grill and have a glass of sherry and bitters brought to him at a table and eat a cracker with it, and he’d take in every show, even the Dizzy Belles of Gotham Big Blonde Beauty Show.  He was refined and even moral in the best sense of the word, but still human.

“Our prominent young society buds took the keenest notice of him at once, as would naturally happen, he being a society bachelor of means and by long odds the best catch in Red Gap since old Potter Knapp, of the Loan and Trust Company, had broke his period of mourning for his third wife by marrying Myrtle Wade that waited on table at the Occidental Hotel, with the black band still on his left coat sleeve.  It’s no exaggeration to say that Mr. Burchell Daggett became the most sought-after social favourite among Reg Gap’s hoot mondy in less than a week after he unpacked his trunk.  But it was very soon discovered by the bright-eyed little gangsters of the best circles that he wasn’t going to be an easy one to disable.  Naturally when a man has fought ’em off to his age he has learned much of woodcraft and the hunter’s cunning wiles, and this one had sure developed timber sense.  He beat ’em at their own game for three months by the simple old device of not playing any favourite for one single minute, and very, very seldom getting alone with one where the foul stroke can be dealt by the frailest hand with muscular precision.  If he took Daisy Estelle Maybury to the chicken pie supper to get a new carpet for the Presbyterian parsonage, he’d up and take Beryl Mae and her aunt, or Gussie Himebaugh, or Luella Stultz, to the lawn feet at Judge Ballard’s for new uniforms for the band boys.  At the Bazaar of All Nations he bought as many chances of one girl as he did of another, and if he hadn’t any more luck than a rabbit