“You are sure he’s dead?” questioned the gambler.

Kneeling beside the crumpled figure Gilmore slipped his hand in between the body and the floor; his manner was cool and businesslike.  After a moment he withdrew his hand and looked, up into the colonel’s face.

“Well?” asked the colonel.

“Oh, he’s dead, all right!” Gilmore glanced about him, and the colonel’s eyes following, they both discovered that the door leading into the side yard was partly open.

“He went that way, eh, Colonel?”

“It’s altogether likely,” agreed the veteran.

“It’s a nasty business!” said Gilmore reflectively.

“Shocking!” snapped the colonel.

“He took big chances,” commented the gambler, “living the way he did.” 
He spoke of the dead man.

“Poor old man!” said the colonel pityingly.

What had it all amounted to, those chances for the sake of gain, which Gilmore had in mind.

“He can’t have been dead very long,” said Gilmore.  “Did you find him, Colonel?” he asked as he stood erect.

“No, Shrimplin found him.”

Again the two men looked about them.  On the floor by the counter at their right was a heavy sledge.  Gilmore called Harbison’s attention to this.

“I guess the job was done with that,” he said.

“Possibly,” agreed Harbison.

Gilmore picked up the sledge and examined it narrowly.

“Yes, you can see, there is blood on it.”  He handed it to Harbison, who stepped under the nearest lamp with the clumsy weapon in his hand.

“You are right, Andy!” and he glanced at the rude instrument of death with a look of repugnance on his keen sensitive face, then he carefully, placed it under the wooden counter.  “Horrible!” he muttered to himself.

“It was no joke for him!” said the gambler, catching the last word.  “But some one was bound to try this dodge sooner or later.  Why, as far back as I can remember, people said he kept his money hidden away at the bottom of nail kegs and under heaps of scrap-iron.”  He took a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and struck a match.  “Well, I wouldn’t want to be the other fellow, Colonel; I’d be in all kinds of a panic; it takes nerve for a job like this.”

“It’s a shocking circumstance,” said the colonel.

“I wonder if it paid!” speculated the gambler.  “And I wonder who’ll get what he leaves.  Has he any family or relatives?”

“No, not so far as any one knows.  He came here many years ago, a close-mouthed Scotchman, who never had any intimates, never married, and never spoke of his private affairs.”

There was a slight commotion at the door.  They could hear Shrimplin’s agitated voice, and a moment later two men, chance passers-by with whom he had been speaking, shook themselves free of the little lamplighter and entered the room.  The new-comers nodded to the colonel and Gilmore as they paused to stare mutely at the body on the floor.