hotel above the stage-office. Her husband, she said, was lying sick in
Placerville; that's what she said; but it was Fate, Tommy, Fate. Three
months afterward, her husband takes an overdose of morphine for delirium
tremems, and dies. There's folks ez sez she gave it to him, but it's
Fate. A year after that I married her,--Fate, Tommy, Fate!

"I lived with her jest three months," he went on, after a long
breath,--"three months! It ain't much time for a happy man. I've seen
a good deal o' hard life in my day, but there was days in that three
months longer than any day in my life,--days, Tommy, when it was a
toss-up whether I should kill her or she me. But thar, I'm done. You are
a young man, Tommy, and I ain't goin' to tell things thet, old as I am,
three years ago I couldn't have believed."

When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat
silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington
asked where his wife was now.

"Ask me no more, my boy,--no more. I've said my say." With a gesture as
of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose, and walked to the
window.

"You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world 'ud do me
good. Ef you can't go with me, well and good. But go I must."

"Not before luncheon, I hope," said a very sweet voice, as Blanche
Masterman suddenly stood before them. "Father would never forgive me if
in his absence I permitted one of Mr. Islington's friends to go in this
way. You will stay, won't you? Do! And you will give me your arm now;
and when Mr. Islington has done staring, he will follow us into the