“Sometimes they are,” was the half extorted answer.

“Oh, Green, is that you?” exclaimed the judge, as Harvey Green came in with a soft cat-like step.  He was, evidently, glad of a chance to get rid of his familiar friend and elector.

I turned my eyes upon the man, and read his face closely.  It was unchanged.  The same cold, sinister eye; the same chiselled mouth, so firm now, and now yielding so elastically; the same smile “from the teeth outward”—­the same lines that revealed his heart’s deep, dark selfishness.  If he had indulged in drink during the five intervening years, it had not corrupted his blood, nor added thereto a single degree of heat.

“Have you seen anything of Hammond this evening?” asked Judge Lyman.

“I saw him an hour or two ago,” answered Green.

“How does he like his new horse?”

“He’s delighted with him.”

“What was the price?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

“Indeed!”

The judge had already arisen, and he and Green were now walking side by side across the bar-room floor.

“I want to speak a word with you,” I heard Lyman say.

And then the two went out together.  I saw no more of them during the evening.

Not long afterward, Willy Hammond came in.  Ah! there was a sad change here; a change that in no way belied the words of Matthew the bar-keeper.  He went up to the bar, and I heard him ask for Judge Lyman.  The answer was in so low a voice that it did not reach my ear.

With a quick, nervous motion, Hammond threw his hand toward a row of decanters on the shelf behind the bar-keeper, who immediately set one of them containing brandy before him.  From this he poured a tumbler half full, and drank it off at a single draught, unmixed with water.

He then asked some further question, which I could not hear, manifesting, as it appeared, considerable excitement of mind.  In answering him, Matthew glanced his eyes upward, as if indicating some room in the house.  The young man then retired, hurriedly, through the sitting-room.

“What’s the matter with Willy Hammond tonight?” asked some one of the bar-keeper.  “Who’s he after in such a hurry?”

“He wants to see Judge Lyman,” replied Matthew.

“Oh!”

“I guess they’re after no good,” was remarked.

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

Two young men, well dressed, and with faces marked by intelligence, came in at the moment, drank at the bar, chatted a little while familiarly with the bar-keeper, and then quietly disappeared through the door leading into the sitting-room.  I met the eyes of the man with whom I had talked during the afternoon, and his knowing wink brought to mind his suggestion, that in one of the upper rooms gambling went on nightly, and that some of the most promising young men of the town had been drawn, through the bar attraction, into this vortex of ruin.  I felt a shudder creeping along my nerves.