“Well, I hope my boy will never have any use for one,” the invalid said. “He is not of a quarrelsome nature. It takes a good deal to make him angry, but when he gets so he is not easily controlled.”
CHAPTER IV.
HE young men in Carson Dwight's set had an odd sort of lounging-place. It was Keith Gordon's room above his father's bank in an old building which had withstood the shot and shell of the Civil War. “The Den,” as it was called by its numerous hap-hazard occupants, was reached from the street on the outside by a narrow flight of worm-eaten and rickety stairs and a perilous little balcony or passage that clung to the brick wall, twenty feet from the ground, along the full length of the building. It was here in one of the four beds that Keith slept, when there was room for him. After a big dance or a match game of baseball, when there were impecunious visitors from neighboring towns left over for various and sundry reasons, Keith had to seek the sanctimonious solitude of his father's home or go to the hotel.
The den was about twenty-five feet square. It was not as luxurious as such bachelor quarters went in Augusta, Savannah, or even Atlanta, but it answered the purpose of “the gang” which made use of it. Keith frankly declared that he had overhauled and replenished it for the last time. He said that it was absolutely impossible to keep washbasins and pitchers, when they were hurled out of the windows for pure amusement of men who didn't care whether they washed or not. As for the laundry bill, he happened to know that it was larger than that of the Johnston House or the boarding department of the Darley Female College. He said, too, that he had warned the gang for the last time that the room would be closed if any more clog-dancing were indulged in. He said his father complained that the plastering was dropping down on his desk below, and sensible men ought to know that a thing like that could not go on forever.
The rules concerning the payment for drinks were certainly lax. No accounts were kept of any man's indebtedness. Any member of the gang was at liberty to stow away a flask of any size in the bureau or wash-stand drawer, or under the mattresses or pillows of his or anybody else's bed, where Skelt, the negro who swept the room, and loved stimulants could not find it.