The Just and the Unjust | Page 8

asked Langham curiously.
"Ten," said North.
Langham whistled.
"Do you mean to tell me you are down to that? Why, you told me once
you held a hundred!"
"So I did once, but it costs money to be the kind of fool I've been! said
North.
"Well, I suppose you are doing the sensible thing in getting out of this.
Have you any notion where you are going or what you'll do?"
North shook his head.
"Oh, you'll get into something!" the lawyer encouraged. "When shall
you see McBride?"
"This afternoon. Why?"
"I was going to say that I was just there with Atkinson. He and
McBride have been in a timber speculation, and Atkinson handed over
three thousand dollars in cash to the old man. I suppose he has banked
it in some heap of scrap-iron on the premises!" said Langham laughing.
"I think I shall go there now," resolved North. While he was speaking
he had moved to the door leading into the hail, and had opened it.
"Hold on, John!" said Langham, detaining him. "Evelyn is home. She
came quite unexpectedly to-day; you won't leave town without getting
up to the house to see her?"
"I think I shall," replied North hastily. "I much prefer not to say
good-by."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Langham.

"No, Marsh, I don't intend to say good-by to any one!" North quietly
turned back into the room.
"I had intended having you up to the house to-night for a blow-out,"
urged Langham, but North shook his head. "You and Gilmore, Jack;
and by the way, this puts me in a nice hole! I have already asked
Gilmore, and he's coming. Now, how the devil am to get out of it? I
can't spring him alone on the family circle, and I don't want to hurt his
feelings!"
"Call it off, Marsh; say I couldn't come; that's a good enough excuse to
give Gilmore. Why, that fellow's a common card-sharp, you can't ask
Evelyn to meet him!"
A slight noise in the hall caused both men to glance toward the door,
where they saw just beyond the threshold the swarthy-faced Gilmore.
There was a brief embarrassed silence, and then North nodded to the
new-comer, but the salutation was not returned.
"Well, good-by, Marsh!" he said, and turned to the door. As he brushed
past the gambler their eyes met for an instant, and in that instant
Gilmore's face turned livid with rage.
"I'll fix you for that, so help me God, I will!" he said, but North made
no answer. He passed down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the
street.
McBride's was directly opposite on the corner of High Street and the
Square; a mean two-story structure of frame, across the shabby front of
which hung a shabby creaking sign bearing witness that within might
be found: "Archibald McBride, Hardware and Cutlery, Implements and
Bar Iron." McBride had kept store on that corner time out of mind.
He was an austere unapproachable old man, having no relatives of
whom any one knew; with few friends and fewer intimates; a rich man,
according to the Mount Hope standard, and a miser according to the
Mount Hope gossip, with the miser's traditional suspicion of banks. It

was rumored that he had hidden away vast sums of money in his dingy
store, or in the closely-shuttered rooms above, where the odds and ends
of the merchandise in which he dealt had accumulated in rusty and
neglected heaps.
The old man wore an air of mystery, and this air of mystery extended to
his place of business. It was dark and dirty and ill-kept. On the
brightest summer day the sunlight stole vaguely in through grimy
cobwebbed windows. The dust of years had settled deep on unused
shelves and, in abandoned corners, and whole days were said to pass
when no one but the ancient merchant himself entered the building. Yet
in spite of the trade that had gone elsewhere he had grown steadily
richer year by year.
When North entered the store he found McBride busy with his books in
his small back office, a lean black cat asleep on the desk at his elbow.
"Good afternoon, John!" said the old merchant as he turned from his
high desk, removing as he did so a pair of heavy steel-rimmed
spectacles, that dominated a high-bridged nose which in turn dominated
a wrinkled and angular face.
"I thought I should find you here!" said North.
"You'll always find me here of a week-day," and he gave the young
fellow the fleeting suggestion of a smile. He had a liking for North,
whose father, years before, had been one of the few friends he had
made in Mount Hope.
The Norths had been among the town's earliest settlers, John's