"Oh, I mean I'll pray it won't hurt you. I wouldn't interfere with the
game, for I don't know one card from another, and I'm sure the Lord
don't either, but it's your soul I'm thinkin' of and worried about.
I'll slip down with the green box--there's more'n a hundred dollars in
it. And now good-bye, Da--go at him, and God bless you--and play like
the divil!"

Mr. John Corbett slowly folded up the _War Cry_ and placed it in his
pocket, and when Maggie brought down the green box with their earnings
in it he emptied its contents in his pocket, and then, softly humming
to himself, he went into the other room.

The wind raged and the storm roared around the Black Creek Stopping-
House all that night, but inside the fire burned bright in the box-
stove, and an interested and excited group sat around the table where
Rance Belmont and John Corbett played the game! Peter Rockett, with his
eyes bulging from his head, watched his grave employer cut and deal and
gather in the stakes, with as much astonishment as if that dignified
gentleman had walked head downward on the ceiling. Yet John Corbett
proceeded with the game, as grave and solemn as when he asked a
blessing at the table. Sometimes he hummed snatches of Army tunes, and
sometimes Rance Belmont swore softly, and to the anxious ear which
listened at the stovepipe-hole above, both sounds were of surpassing
sweetness!





CHAPTER XI.