“I don’t remember, boss, I was full, see—­and maybe I said too much and then agin maybe I didn’t!”

“I hope you like this, Marsh; it’s the sort of thing I been up against,” said Gilmore.

By way of answer Langham made a weary gesture.  The horror of the situation was now a thing beyond fear.

“I’m for sending the drunken loafer to the other side of the continent,” said Gilmore.

“What’s the use of that?” asked Langham dully.

“Every use,” rejoined Gilmore with fresh confidence.  “It’s enough, ain’t it, that he’s talked to your father; we can’t take chances on his talking to any one else.  There’s the west-bound express; I’m for putting him on that—­there’s time enough.  We can give him a couple of hundred dollars and that will be the end of him, for if he ever shows his face here in Mount Hope, I’ll break every bone in his body.  What do you say?”

“Perhaps you are right!” And Langham glanced uncertainly at the handy-man.

“Well, it’s either that, or else I can knock him over the head.  Perhaps you had rather do that, it’s more in your line.”

“Boss, you give me the money and let me go now, and I won’t ever come back!” cried Montgomery eagerly.  “I been lookin’ for the chance to get clear of this bum town!  I’ll stay away, don’t you lose no sleep about that; I ain’t got nothin’ to ever bring me back.”

And on the moment Mr. Montgomery banished from his mind and heart all idea of the pure joys of domestic life.  It was as if his old woman had never been.  He was sure travel was what he required, and a great deal of it, and all in one direction—­away from Mount Hope.

No unnecessary time was wasted on Montgomery’s appearance.  A wet towel in the not too gentle hands of Mr. Gilmore removed the blood stains from his face, and then he was led forth into the night,—­the night which so completely swallowed up all trace of him that his old woman and her brood sought his accustomed haunts in vain.  Nor was Mr. Moxlow any more successful in his efforts to discover the handy-man’s whereabouts.  As for Mount Hope she saw in the mysterious disappearance of the star witness only the devious activities of John North’s friends.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FATHER AND SON

While Mr. Gilmore was an exceedingly capable accomplice, at once resourceful, energetic, unsentimental and conscienceless, he yet combined with these solid merits, certain characteristics which rendered uninterrupted intercourse with him a horror and a shame to Marshall Langham who was daily and almost hourly paying the price the gambler had set on his silence.  And what a price it was!  Gilmore was his master, coarse, brutal, and fiercely exacting.  How he hated him, and yet how necessary he had become; for the gambler never faltered, was never uncertain; he met each difficulty with a callous readiness which Langham knew he himself would utterly have lacked.  He decided this was because Gilmore was without imagination, since in his own many fearful, doubting moments, he saw always what he had come to believe as the inevitable time when the wicked fabric they were building would collapse like a house of cards in a gale of wind, and his terrible secret would be revealed to all men.