WHEN THE DAY BROKE.
All night long the tide of fortune ebbed and flowed around the table where Rance Belmont and John Corbett played the game which is still remembered and talked of by the Black Creek old settlers when their thoughts run upon old times.
Just as the daylight began to show blue behind the frosted panes, and the yellow lamplight grew pale and sickly, Rance Belmont rose and stretched his stiffened limbs.
"I am sorry to bring such a pleasant gathering to an end," he said, with his inscrutable smile, "but I believe I am done." He was searching through his pockets as he spoke. "Yes, I believe the game is over."
"You're a mighty good loser, Rance," George Sims declared with admiration.
The other men rose, too, and went out to feed their horses, for the storm was over and they must soon be on the road.
When John Corbett and Rance Belmont went out into the kitchen, Maggie Corbett was chopping up potatoes in the frying-pan with a baking-powder can, looking as fresh and rested as if she had been asleep all night, instead of holding a lonely vigil beside a stovepipe-hole.
John Corbett advanced to the table and solemnly deposited the green box thereon; then with painstaking deliberation he arranged the contents of his pockets in piles. Rance Belmont's watch lay by itself; then the bills according to denomination; last of all the silver and a slip of brown paper with writing on it in lead-pencil.
When all was complete, he nodded to Maggie to take charge of the proceedings.
Maggie hastily inspected the contents of the green box, and having satisfied herself that it was all there, she laid it up, high and dry, on the clock shelf.