practice; but the offer had its disadvantages. It was not in the line
political at all, but in one with vexatious business demands and
requisites; yet it was accepted in a moment. And within the next week
all the wicked, nervous night-life was abandoned, all the friendships
formed there put upon probation, all the soiled sentiment made a thing
to be ended surely and forgotten, if possible.

There were some wrenches to it all. Camille learns to love sometimes,
and Oakhurst, the gambler, does not want to part with one who has stood
a friend in an emergency. But Camille knows that, for her, few flowers
are even annual, and Oakhurst is practical and a fatalist.

From that day, all his life, Grant Harlson kept away from close touch
with this ever-existing group who live from day to day because they
have been branded and do not care. Good friends he ever had among
them, but they never claimed him, though, on many occasions, the men
served him. They recognized the fact that he had never been more than
an adopted wanderer among them, and rather prided themselves upon him.
In later times he would occasionally exchange a word or two on that old
life with some one who had grown outwardly respectable, with some
one-time thug, later saloon-keeper and alderman and what may follow,
and would be reminded of what happened on the night when the mirrors
were all broken, and the Washington woman shot the man she was seeking,
or when "we did the Coulson gang;" but it had long grown to seem unreal
and dreamlike. He grew away from the memory, and there was no glamour
to him in what might attract some other men to evil-doing, because to
him there could be no novelty. He was a past-master in the ceremonials
of fallen, reckless human nature, and the ritual bored him. He
deserved no credit further than that. True, he was but young when he
learned the rites, but that he was not still a member of the order was