unfortunate set of circumstances, and in a month's time the
robber gang might be war-dancing around his financial carcass.
This very day a street-car might run him down, or a sign fall
from a building and smash in his skull. Or there was disease,
ever rampant, one of Luck's grimmest whims. Who could say?
To-morrow, or some other day, a ptomaine bug, or some other of a
thousand bugs, might jump out upon him and drag him down. There
was Doctor Bascom, Lee Bascom who had stood beside him a week ago
and talked and argued, a picture of magnificent youth, and
strength, and health. And in three days he was dead--pneumonia,
rheumatism of the heart, and heaven knew what else--at the end
screaming in agony that could be heard a block away. That had
been terrible. It was a fresh, raw stroke in Daylight's
consciousness. And when would his own turn come? Who could say?

In the meantime there was nothing to do but play the cards he
could see in his hand, and they were BATTLE, REVENGE, AND
COCKTAILS. And Luck sat over all and grinned.



CHAPTER XI

One Sunday, late in the afternoon, found Daylight across the bay
in the Piedmont hills back of Oakland. As usual, he was in a big
motor-car, though not his own, the guest of Swiftwater Bill,
Luck's own darling, who had come down to spend the clean-up of
the seventh fortune wrung from the frozen Arctic gravel. A
notorious spender, his latest pile was already on the fair road
to follow the previous six. He it was, in the first year of