“Mr. Jones, there’s a real good pool-player in town, and he wants to meet you.”

Blaze uttered a triumphant cry.  “Get him, quick!  Send the brass-band to bring him.  Dave, you hook your spurs over the rung of a chair and watch your uncle clean this tenderfoot.  If he’s got class, I’ll make him mayor of the town, for a good pool-shooter is all this metropolis lacks.  Why, sometimes I go plumb to San Antone for a game.”  He whispered in his friend’s ear, “Paloma don’t let me gamble, but if you’ve got any dinero, get it down on me.”  Then, addressing the bystanders, he proclaimed, “Boys, if this pilgrim is good enough to stretch me out we’ll marry him off and settle him down.”

“No chance, Uncle Blaze; he’s the most married person in town,” some one volunteered.  “His wife is the new dressmaker—­and she’s got a mustache.”  For some reason this remark excited general mirth.

“That’s too bad.  I never saw but one woman with a mustache, and she licked me good.  If he’s yoked up to that kind of a lady, I allow his nerves will be wrecked before he gets here.  I hope to God he ain’t entirely done for.”  Blaze ran the last three balls from a well-nigh impossible position, then racked up the whole fifteen with trembling eagerness and eyed the door expectantly.  He was wiping his spectacles when the proprietor returned with a slim, sallow man whom he introduced as Mr. Strange.

“Welcome to our city!” Blaze cried, with a flourish of his glasses.  “Get a prod, Mr. Strange, and bust ’em, while I clean my wind-shields.  These fellow-townsmen of mine handle a cue like it was an ox-gad.”

Mr. Strange selected a cue, studied the pyramid for an instant, then called the three ball for the upper left-hand corner, and pocketed it, following which he ran the remaining fourteen.  Blaze watched this procedure near-sightedly, and when the table was bare he thumped his cue loudly upon the floor.  He beamed upon his opponent; he appeared ready to embrace him.

“Bueno!  There’s art, science, and natural aptitude!  Fly at ’em again, Mr. Strange, and take your fill.”  He finished polishing his spectacles, and readjusted them.  “I aim to make you so comfortable in Jonesville that—–­” Blaze paused, he started, and a peculiar expression crept over his face.

It seemed to Law that his friend actually turned pale; at any rate, his mouth dropped open and his gaze was no longer hypnotically following the pool-balls, but was fixed upon his opponent.

Now there were chapters in the life of Blaze Jones that had never been fully written, and it occurred to Dave that such a one had been suddenly reopened; therefore he prepared himself for some kind of an outburst.  But Blaze appeared to be numbed; he even jumped nervously when Mr. Strange missed a shot and advised him that his chance had come.

As water escapes from a leaky pail, so had Jones’s fondness for pool oozed away, and with it had gone his accustomed skill.  He shot blindly, and, much to the general surprise, missed an easy attempt.