a big chance to make a million or two, as he thought. But he backed
himself against the temptation, and won. That day I could have put the
ball into his wicket; but I didn't. That's a funny case of the kind."

"Did he ever know?"

"He didn't. We are fighting yet. He is richer than I am now, and at this
moment he's playing a hard game straight at several interests of mine.
But I reckon I can stop him."

"You must get a great deal out of life," she said. "Have you always
enjoyed it so?" She was thinking it would be strange to live in contact
with such events very closely. It was so like adventure.

"Always--from the start."

"Tell me something of it all, won't you?" He did not hesitate.

"I was born in a little place in Maine. My mother was a good woman, they
said--straight as a die all her life. I can only remember her in a kind
of dream, when she used to gather us children about the big
rocking-chair, and pray for us, and for my father, who was away most of
the time, working in the timber-shanties in the winter, and at odd things
in the summer. My father wasn't much of a man. He was kind-hearted, but
shiftless, but pretty handsome for a man from Maine.

"My mother died when I was six years old. Things got bad. I was the
youngest. The oldest was only ten years old. She was the head of the
house. She had the pluck of a woman. We got along somehow, until one day,
when she and I were scrubbing the floor, she caught cold. She died in