CHAPTER XIII
"WHY don't you go outside?" I asked of the Jam-wagon.
I had rescued him from one of his periodical plunges into the cesspool of debauch, and he was peaked, pallid, penitent. Listlessly he stared at me a long moment, the dull, hollow-eyed stare of the recently regenerate.
"Well," he said at last, "I think I stay for the same reason many another man stays—pride. I feel that the Yukon owes me one of two things, a stake or a grave—and she's going to pay."
"Seems to me, the way you're shaping you're more liable to get the latter."
"Yes—well, that'll be all right."
"Look here," I remonstrated, "don't be a rotter. You're a man, a splendid one. You might do anything, be anything. For Heaven's sake stop slipping cogs, and get into the game."
His thin, handsome face hardened bitterly.
"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm not fit to play the game; sometimes I wonder if it's all worth while; sometimes I'm half inclined to end it."
"Oh, don't talk nonsense."