at the closed sitting room door, but receiving no reply, pushed it open upon the most unexpected and astounding scene he had ever witnessed.  Around the centre table several respectable members of the Hightown Church, including the parson, were gathered with intense and eager faces playing poker, and behind the parson, with his hands in his pockets, carelessly lounged the doctor’s patient, the picture of health and vigor.  A disused pack of cards was scattered on the floor, and before the gentle and precise Mrs. Rivers was heaped a pile of beans that would have filled a quart measure.

When Dr. Duchesne had tactfully retreated before the hurried and stammering apologies of his host and hostess, and was alone with Jack in his rooms, he turned to him with a gravity that was more than half affected and said, “How long, sir, did it take you to effect this corruption?”

“Upon my honor,” said Jack simply, “they played last night for the first time.  And they forced me to show them.  But,” added Jack after a significant pause, “I thought it would make the game livelier and be more of a moral lesson if I gave them nearly all good pat hands.  So I ran in a cold deck on them—­the first time I ever did such a thing in my life.  I fixed up a pack of cards so that one had three tens, another three jacks, and another three queens, and so on up to three aces.  In a minute they had all tumbled to the game, and you never saw such betting.  Every man and woman there believed he or she had struck a sure thing, and staked accordingly.  A new panful of beans was brought on, and Seth, your friend, banked for them.  And at last the parson raked in the whole pile.”

“I suppose you gave him the three aces,” said Dr. Duchesne gloomily.

“The parson,” said Jack slowly, “Hadn’t A single pair in his hand.  It was the stoniest, deadest, neatest bluff I ever saw.  And when he’d frightened off the last man who held out and laid that measly hand of his face down on that pile of kings, queens, and aces, and looked around the table as he raked in the pile, there was a smile of humble self-righteousness on his face that was worth double the money.”

A PUPIL OF CHESTNUT RIDGE

The schoolmaster of Chestnut Ridge was interrupted in his after-school solitude by the click of hoof and sound of voices on the little bridle path that led to the scant clearing in which his schoolhouse stood.  He laid down his pen as the figures of a man and woman on horseback passed the windows and dismounted before the porch.  He recognized the complacent, good-humored faces of Mr. and Mrs. Hoover, who owned a neighboring ranch of some importance and who were accounted well to do people by the community.  Being a childless couple, however, while they generously contributed to the support of the little school, they had not added to its flock, and it was with some curiosity that the young schoolmaster greeted them and awaited the purport of their visit.  This was protracted in delivery through a certain polite dalliance with the real subject characteristic of the Southwestern pioneer.