which I have before pointed out in these pages. And with the halo of
that forgiveness and marital confidence still lingering above the pair,
with the reader's permission we will leave them, and return to Mr.
Oakhurst.

But not for two weeks. At the end of that time, he walked into his rooms
in Sacramento, and in his old manner took his seat at the faro-table.

"How's your arm, Jack?" asked an incautious player.

There was a smile followed the question, which, however, ceased as Jack
looked up quietly at the speaker.

"It bothers my dealing a little; but I can shoot as well with my left."

The game was continued in that decorous silence which usually
distinguished the table at which Mr. John Oakhurst presided.




WAN LEE, THE PAGAN


As I opened Hop Sing's letter, there fluttered to the ground a square
strip of yellow paper covered with hieroglyphics, which, at first
glance, I innocently took to be the label from a pack of Chinese
fire-crackers. But the same envelope also contained a smaller strip of
rice-paper, with two Chinese characters traced in India ink, that I
at once knew to be Hop Sing's visiting-card. The whole, as afterwards