He gave back a silly laugh, gulped the rest of the liquor down, and was ordering another when Sadness came in.  He came up directly to Joe and sat down beside him.  “Mr. Hamilton says ‘Make it two, Jack,’” he said with easy familiarity.  “Well, what ’s the matter, old man?  You ’re looking glum.”

“I feel glum.”

“The divine Hattie has n’t been cutting any capers, has she?  The dear old girl has n’t been getting hysterical at her age?  Let us hope not.”

Joe glared at him.  Why in the devil should this fellow be so sadly gay when he was weighted down with sorrow and shame and disgust?

“Come, come now, Hamilton, if you ’re sore because I invited myself to take a drink with you, I ’ll withdraw the order.  I know the heroic thing to say is that I ’ll pay for the drinks myself, but I can’t screw my courage up to the point of doing so unnatural a thing.”

Young Hamilton hastened to protest.  “Oh, I know you fellows now well enough to know how many drinks to pay for.  It ain’t that.”

“Well, then, out with it.  What is it?  Have n’t been up to anything, have you?”

The desire came to Joe to tell this man the whole truth, just what was the matter, and so to relieve his heart.  On the impulse he did.  If he had expected much from Sadness he was disappointed, for not a muscle of the man’s face changed during the entire recital.

When it was over, he looked at his companion critically through a wreath of smoke.  Then he said:  “For a fellow who has had for a full year the advantage of the education of the New York clubs, you are strangely young.  Let me see, you are nineteen or twenty now—­yes.  Well, that perhaps accounts for it.  It ’s a pity you were n’t born older.  It ’s a pity most men are n’t.  They would n’t have to take so much time and lose so many good things learning.  Now, Mr. Hamilton, let me tell you, and you will pardon me for it, that you are a fool.  Your case is n’t half as bad as that of nine-tenths of the fellows that hang around here.  Now, for instance, my father was hung.”

Joe started and gave a gasp of horror.

“Oh, yes, but it was done with a very good rope and by the best citizens of Texas, so it seems that I really ought to be very grateful to them for the distinction they conferred upon my family, but I am not.  I am ungratefully sad.  A man must be very high or very low to take the sensible view of life that keeps him from being sad.  I must confess that I have aspired to the depths without ever being fully able to reach them.

“Now look around a bit.  See that little girl over there?  That ’s Viola.  Two years ago she wrenched up an iron stool from the floor of a lunch-room, and killed another woman with it.  She ’s nineteen,—­just about your age, by the way.  Well, she had friends with a certain amount of pull.  She got out of it, and no one thinks the worse of Viola.  You see, Hamilton, in this life we are all suffering from fever, and no