“I say I don’t see it. There is no necessity greater than a man’s will; and when you try to make me believe that the honour man of my class is constrained to come down to dealing faro in a mining camp——”
“I know, Ned; but you don’t understand. You saw the fair beginning ten years ago, and now you are getting a glimpse of the ending. To you, I suppose, it seems like Lucifer’s fall—a drop from heaven to hell; and so it is in effect. But, as a matter of fact, a man doesn’t fall; he climbs down into the pit a step at a time—and there are more steps behind me than I can ever retrace.”
“But you can’t go on indefinitely,” insisted the other.
The fallen one shook his head. “That is a true word. But there is only one adequate ending to such a fiasco of a life as mine.”
“And that?”
“Is a forty-five calibre bullet, well aimed.”
“Bah! That is a coward’s alternative, and if you haven’t altogether parted company with the George Brant I used to know, we needn’t consider it. Why don’t you turn over a clean leaf and cut the whole despicable business?”
Brant sat down on the porch step and clasped his hands over his knee. Friendship has its key wherewith to unlock any door of confidence, but from disuse the lock was rusted and it yielded reluctantly.
“I have half a mind to let the game wait while I tell you,” he said at length. “It isn’t a pleasant tale, and if you are disgusted you can call me down.”
“Never mind about that; go on.”