back when you gone.' His voice was sweet as sugar, but he slammed the
door. I would have followed him in and put some better manners into him
with a kick, but the old orang-outang had turned the key inside, and when
I'd had time to remember that I was a deacon and Sunday-school teacher I
walked away. What do you mean by his good fortune of yesterday?"

"I mean he struck Charlie Howard for seventy-five thousand."

My hearer's mouth dropped open. He was equally amazed and amused. "Well,
well, well! That accounts for his silly high-headedness."

"Ah! no: that matter of yours was last week and the drawing was only
yesterday."

"Oh, that's so. I don't keep run of that horrible lottery business. It
makes me sick at heart to see the hideous canker poisoning the character
and blasting the lives of every class of our people--why, don't you think
so?"

"Oh, yes, I--I do. Yes, I certainly do!"

"But your conviction isn't exactly red-hot, I perceive. Come, wake up."

We rose. At the first street corner, as we were parting, I noticed he was
still talking of the lottery.

"Pestilential thing," he was calling it. "Men blame it lightly on the
ground that there are other forms of gambling which our laws don't reach.
I suppose a tiger in a village mustn't be killed till we have killed all
the tigers back in the woods!"