, a little self-consciously, for

e down to brass tacks," he muttered, "when I've settled everything (thank heaven, I don't owe my tailor!) there will

retense of devouring his master's immaculate boot-laces. Valiant put his hand under the eager muzzle, lifted the intelligent head to his knee and looked into t

herry's! This morning he had been rich; to-night he was poor! He had imagined this in the abstract, but now of a sudden the fact seemed fraught with such a ghastly and

borrowed from a friend or been dunned by an importunate tradesman. And he had never tried to earn a

ad really gone "smash", and of these all but one had taken themselves speedily and decently off. He thought of Rod Creighton, the one failure who had clung to the old life, achieving for a transient period the brilliant success of living on his friends. When this ended he had gone on the road fo

een as sharp as a steel-trap. But what did he, John Valiant, know of business? Less than of law! Why, he was not fit to smirk behind a c

st it be to toil through the clammy cold of winter and the smothering fur-heat of summer, in some revol

ke a gigantic checker-board by the shining lines of streets, to where the flashing electric signs of the theater district laid their wid

he thought with a twisted smile, at some tawdry occupation that called for no experience, to pay for a meal in some second-rate restaurant and a pallet in some shabby-genteel, hall b

e knew, were a fair exchange for wealth any day. "Cutlet for cutlet"-the satiric phrase ran through his mind. Why not? Oth

fortune-thanks to modern journalism, which was fond of stating that if the steel rails of the Fargo railways were set end to end, the chain would reach from the earth to the planet Saturn or thereabouts-was as familiar to the public imagination as Caruso or the Hope diamond. And the daughter Katharine ha

or, of logs, was equipped within with Turkish bath, billiard-room and the most indefatigable chef west of St. Petersburg. The evening before his host's swift motor had hooted him off to the station, as its wide hall exhaled the bouquet of after-dinner cigars, he had

little hot ripple had run over him. "Not on your life, Chum!" he said. "No shameless barter! The

ght to have thrown me over long ago. You've probably realized it all along, but it has never dawned on me until lately. I've worn the blue ribbon so long I'd come to think it was a decoration. All my life I've been just another of those well-meaning, brainless young idiots who have never

he told himself, he was conscious of a new rugged something that had been slowly dawning within him, a sen

s letters, and followed by the dog, wen