The men began to edge closer to the crowd, giving little, swift,

desperate, searching looks from left to right, and right to left, moving

nervously about, like weasels in a trap. "Close up there tight," said

Harkless, sharply. "Don't let them out."

"W'y can't we git no square treatment here?" one of the gamblers whined;

but his eyes, blazing with rage, belied the plaintive passivity of his

tone. "We been running no skin. Wy d'ye say we gotter give up our own

money? You gotter prove it was a skin. We risked our money fair."

"Prove it! Come up here, Eph Watts. Friends," the editor turned to the

crowd, smiling, "friends, here's a man we ran out of town once, because he

knew too much about things of this sort. He's come back to us again and

he's here to stay. He'll give us an object-lesson on the shell game."

"It's pretty simple," remarked Mr. Watts. "The best way is to pick up the

ball with your second finger and the back part of your thumb as you

pretend to lay the shell down over it: this way." He illustrated, and

showed several methods of manipulation, with professional sang-froid; and

as he made plain the easy swindle by which many had been duped that

morning, there arose an angry and threatening murmur.

"You all see," said Harkless, raising his voice a little, "what a simple

cheat it is--and old as Pharaoh. Yet a lot of you stood around and lost

your own money, and stared like idiots, and let Hartley Bowlder lose

eighty-odd dollars on a shell racket, and not one of you lifted a hand.

How hard did you work for what these two cheap crooks took from you? Ah!"

he cried, "it is because you were greedy that they robbed you so easily.

You know it's true. It's when you want to get something for nothing that

the 'confidence men' steal the money you sweat for and make the farmer a

laughing stock. And you, Jim Bardlock, Town Marshal!--you, who confess

that you 'went in the game sixty cents' worth, yourself--" His eyes were

lit with wrath as he raised his accusing hand and levelled it at the

unhappy municipal.

The Town Marshal smiled uneasily and deprecatingly about him, and, meeting

only angry glances, hearing only words of condemnation, he passed his hand

unsteadily over his fat mustache, shifted from one leg to the other and

back again, looked up, looked down, and then, an amiable and pleasure-

loving man, beholding nothing but accusation and anger in heaven and

earth, and wishing nothing more than to sink into the waters under the

earth, but having no way of reaching them, finding his troubles quite

unbearable, and unable to meet the manifold eye of man, he sought relief

after the unsagacious fashion of a larger bird than he. His burly form

underwent a series of convulsions not unlike sobs, and he shut his eyes

tightly and held them so, presenting a picture of misery unequalled in the

memory of any spectator. Harkless's outstretched hand began to shake.

"You!" he tried to continue--"you, a man elected to----"




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