“I told them I was bound to come in,” he said, without looking at Breeze, “and say ‘Howdy!’ to the man that’s bin a pal to my women folks and the kids—­and acted white all through!  I said to Mame, ’I reckon he knows who I am, and that I kin be high-toned to them that’s high-toned; kin return shake for shake and shot for shot!’ Aye! that’s me!  So I was bound to come in like a gen’leman, sir, and here I am!”

He threw himself in an unproffered chair and stared at Breeze.

“I’m afraid,” said Breeze dryly, “that, nevertheless, I never knew who you were, and that even now I am ignorant whom I am addressing.”

“That’s just it,” said the second man, with a querulous protest, which did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his friend; “that’s what I’m allus telling Jim.  ‘Jim,’ I says, ’how is folks to know you’re the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o’ them Mariposa Vigilants?  They didn’t see you do it!  They just look at your fancy style and them mustaches of yours, and allow ye might be death on the girls, but they don’t know ye!  An’ this man yere—­he’s a scribe in them papers—­writes what the boss editor tells him, and lives up yere on the roof, ‘longside yer wife and the children—­what’s he knowin’ about you?’ Jim’s all right enough,” he continued, in easy confidence to Breeze, “but he’s too fresh ’bout himself.”

Mr. James Bodine accepted this tribute and criticism of his henchman with a complacent laugh, which was not, however, without a certain contempt for the speaker and the man spoken to.  His bold, selfish eyes wandered round the room as if in search of some other amusement than his companions offered.

“I reckon this is the room which that hound of a landlord, Rakes, allowed he’d fix up for our poker club—­the club that Dan Simmons and me got up, with a few other sports.  It was to be a slap-up affair, right under the roof, where there was no chance of the police raiding us.  But the cur weakened when the Vigilants started out to make war on any game a gen’leman might hev that wasn’t in their gummy-bag, salt pork trade.  Well, it’s gettin’ a long time between drinks, gen’lemen, ain’t it?” He looked round him significantly.

Only the thought of the woman and her children in the next room, and the shame that he believed she was enduring, enabled Breeze to keep his temper or even a show of civility.

“I’m afraid,” he said quietly, “that you’ll find very little here to remind you of the club—­not even the whiskey; for I use the room only as a bedroom, and as I am a workingman, and come in late and go out early, I have never found it available for hospitality, even to my intimate friends.  I am very glad, however, that the little leisure I have had in it has enabled me to make the floor less lonely for your children.”

Mr. Bodine got up with an affected yawn, turned an embarrassed yet darkening eye on Breeze, and lunged unsteadily to the door.  “And as I only happened in to do the reg’lar thing between high-toned gen’lemen, I reckon we kin say ‘Quits.’” He gave a coarse laugh, said “So long,” nodded, stumbled into the passage, and thence into the other room.