“Boss, don’t you blame me, it was my old woman; she wants me home with the kids and her, and the judge, he says I got to go!”

“If he wants to know why I’m keeping you here, send him round to me!” said Gilmore.

“All right, I will.”  And Montgomery staggered to his feet.

But Gilmore pushed him back into his chair.

“What else did you talk about besides your old woman?” asked the gambler, after an oppressive silence in which Montgomery heard only the thump of his heart against his ribs.

“I told him you’d always been like a father to me—­” said the handy-man, ready to weep.

“I’m obliged to you for that!” replied Gilmore with a smile of grim humor.

“He said he always knowed it,” added Montgomery, misled by the smile.

“Well, what else?” questioned Gilmore.

“Why, I reckon that was about all!” said Joe, who had ventured as far afield into the realms of fancy as his drunken faculties would allow.

“You’re sure about that?”

“I hope I may die—­”

“And the judge says you’re to go home?”

“Say, Shrimp took my old woman there, and she cried and bellered and carried on awful!  She loves me, boss—­the judge says I’m to go home to her to-night or he’ll have me pinched.  He says that you and Marsh ain’t to keep me here no longer!”

His voice rose into a wail, for blind terror was laying hold of him.  There was something, a look on Gilmore’s handsome cruel face, he did not understand but which filled him with miserable foreboding.

“What’s that, about Marsh and me keeping you here?” inquired Gilmore.

“You got to leave me loose—­”

“So you told him that?”

“I had to tell him somethin’.  My old woman made an awful fuss!  They had to throw water on her; Shrimp took her home in an express-wagon.  Hell, boss, I’m a married man—­I got a family!  I know what I ought to do, and I’m goin’ home, the judge says I got to!  Him and me talked it all over, and he’s goin’ to speak to Marsh about keepin’ me here!”

“So you’ve told him we keep you here?” And the gambler glowered at him.  He poured himself a drink of whisky and swallowed it at a gulp.  “Well, what else did you tell him?” he asked over the rim of his glass.

“That’s about all; only me and the judge understand each other,” said the handy-man vaguely.

“Well, it was enough!” rejoined Gilmore.  “You are sure you didn’t say anything about North?”

Montgomery shook his head in vigorous denial.

“Sure?” repeated Gilmore, his glance intent and piercing.  “Sure?”

A sickly pallor was overspreading the handy-man’s flame-colored visage.  It began at his heavy puffy jaws, and diffused itself about his cheeks.  He could feel it spread.

“Sure?” said the gambler.  “Sure?”

There was an awful pause.  Gilmore carefully replaced his glass on the table, then he roared in a voice of thunder: