“Who got the money, Bill?” asked the Auditor.
“Crawley, and old Martin, of the Golden Horn Mining Company. Crawley got most of it.”
“A plague of fat old gamblers,” said the Major, solemnly; “they are both as rich as they are mean, and as mean as they are crooked.”
At this moment the door opened and the Governor entered.
IV
THE Executive stopped for a moment and scrutinized his visitors quizzically; then he laughed. “May I inquire, gentlemen, whence arises this gloom?”
The Auditor bowed low. “Good sir,” he said, “your Excellency fails to distinguish between gloom and the gravity of sages.”
“If the funereal,” replied the Governor, “be a sine qua non of the converse of the wise, then there has been here this night great cause for envy on the part of Solomon, the Son of David, King of Israel; for such gloom I have not met with in a world of evil days.”