“What will you gain by ruining me?” repeated Langham fiercely.

The gambler only grinned.

“I am always willing to spend money on my pleasures; and besides when those notes turn up, your father or some one else will have to come across.”

Langham was silent.  He was staring out across the empty snow-strewn Square at the lights in Archibald McBride’s windows.

“Remember,” said Gilmore, moving toward the door.  “I’ll talk to you when you got two thousand dollars.”

“Damn you, where do you think I’ll get it?” cried Langham.

“I’m not good at guessing,” laughed Gilmore.

He turned without another word or look and left the room.  His footsteps echoed loudly in the hall and on the stairs, and then there was silence in the building.  Langham was again looking out across the Square at the lights in Archibald McBride’s windows.

CHAPTER FOUR

ADVENTURE IN EARNEST

Mr. Shrimplin had made his way through a number of back streets without adventure of any sort, and as the night and the storm closed swiftly in about him, the shapes of himself, his cart and of wild Bill disappeared, and there remained to mark his progress only the hissing sputtering flame, that flared spectrally six feet in air as the little lamplighter drove in and out of shabby unfrequented streets and alleys.

It had grown steadily colder with the approach of night, and the wind had risen.  The streets seemed deserted, and Mr. Shrimplin being as he was of a somewhat fanciful turn of mind, could almost imagine himself and Bill the only living things astir in all the town.

He reached Water Street, the western boundary of that part of Mount Hope known as the flats.  He jogged past Maxy Schaffer’s Railroad Hotel at the corner of Front Street, which flung the wicked radiance of its bar-room windows along the shining railroad track where it crossed the creek on the new iron bridge; and keeping on down Water Street with its smoky tenements, entered an outlying district where the lamps were far apart and where red and blue and green switch lights blinked at him out of the storm.

It was nearly six o’clock when he at last wheeled into the Square; here only three gasolene burners—­survivors of the old regime—­held their own against the fast encroaching gas-lamp.

He lighted the one in Division Street and was ready to turn and traverse the north side of the Square to the second lamp which stood a block away at the corner of High Street.  He was drawing Bill’s head about—­Bill being smitten with a sudden desire to go directly home leaving the night’s work unfinished—­when the muffled figure of a man appeared in the street in front of him.  The inch or more of snow that now covered the pavement had deadened the sound of his steps, while the eddying flakes had made possible his near approach unseen.  As he came rapidly into the red glare of Mr. Shrimplin’s hissing torch that hero was exceeding well pleased to recognize a friendly face.