Bob Hampton of Placer

It proved a restless day, and a sufficiently unpleasant one, for Mr.

Hampton. For a number of years he had been diligently training himself

in the school of cynicism, endeavoring to persuade himself that he did

not in the least care what others thought, nor how his own career

ended; impelling himself to constant recklessness in life and thought.

He had thus successfully built up a wall between the present and that

past which long haunted his lonely moments, and had finally decided

that it was hermetically sealed. Yet now, this odd chit of a girl,

this waif whom he had plucked from the jaws of death, had overturned

this carefully constructed barrier as if it had been originally built

of mere cardboard, and he was compelled again to see himself, loathe

himself, just as he had in those past years.

Everything had been changed by her sudden entrance into his life,

everything except those unfortunate conditions which still bound him

helpless. He looked upon the world no longer through his cool, gray

eyes, but out of her darker ones, and the prospect appeared gloomy

enough. He thought it all over again and again, dwelling in reawakened

memory upon details long hidden within the secret recesses of his

brain, yet so little came from this searching survey that the result

left him no plan for the future. He had wandered too far away from

home; the path leading back was long ago overgrown with weeds, and

could not now be retraced. One thing he grasped clearly,--the girl

should be given her chance; nothing in his life must ever again soil

her or lower her ideals. Mrs. Herndon was right, and he realized it;

neither his presence nor his money were fit to influence her future.

He swore between his clinched teeth, his face grown haggard. The sun's

rays bridged the slowly darkening valley with cords of red gold, and

the man pulled himself to his feet by gripping the root of a tree. He

realized that he had been sitting there for hours, and that he was

hungry.

Down beneath, amid the fast awakening noise and bustle of early

evening, the long discipline of the gambler reasserted itself--he got

back his nerve. It was Bob Hampton, cool, resourceful, sarcastic of

speech, quick of temper, who greeted the loungers about the hotel, and

who sat, with his back to the wall, in the little dining-room, watchful

of all others present. And it was Bob Hampton who strolled carelessly

out upon the darkened porch an hour later, leaving a roar of laughter

behind him, and an enemy as well. Little he cared for that, however,

in his present mood, and he stood there, amid the black shadows,

looking contemptuously down upon the stream of coatless humanity

trooping past on pleasure bent, the blue smoke circling his head, his

gray eyes glowing half angrily. Suddenly he leaned forward, clutching

the rail in quick surprise.