“We wasn’t; but we are!” growled Goliath, but Cochran took not the slightest notice. He wanted to take them to a show. Failing in that, he wanted to buy drinks. Failing in that, he bought three cigars at a dollar each. They could find no complaint regarding his liberality. He would have gladly paid their traveling expenses to continue in their company.

And then, when they were ripe to murder him, he did something that at least gained their tolerance. A terribly bent and crippled old man came timorously into the rotunda with a tray of collar buttons and shoe laces. The clerk spotted the vender, called harshly, and a burly porter rushed forward to eject such an objectionable intruder. Cochran rose to the occasion.

“You git to hell out of this!” he roared, planting himself between the porter and the derelict, and poking a hard, huge fist under the bouncer’s nose. “This old feller’s a friend of mine. You let him alone. Come over here and sit down, old hoss. Here—take my cheer!”

Much to the partners’ interest in the proceedings, Lucky Cochran seated the old man and said to him reassuringly, “Never mind, old feller. It’s me that’s lookin’ after you. Me—Lucky Cochran. What I say goes, back in Texas, where I’m known. I know tough luck when I see it. Had a heap of it myself. What’s ailin’ your legs and back? Rheumatiz? U-m-m-mh! I know what that is, too. Had it myself.”

The partners watched Cochran with a dawning respect and—as usual—listened. Cochran certainly had sympathy for one who was in what he called “tough luck.” He asked personal questions that made the partners wince, and then smoothed the wincing with his kindly drawl. They were gradually getting bored when Cochran suddenly said: “See here, uncle, I was goin’ off on a bust. I got money, I have; but I reckon I couldn’t blow in all I got comin’ to me, if I took twenty years for the job. And I reckon I can cut out a few things I was goin’ to do, anyhow. You said just now that if you had a thousand you could buy a cigar shop you know of, where you wouldn’t have to worry no more.”

He dug out that huge roll of bills again, wet his heavy thumb on the tip of his tongue, and proceeded to laboriously count off some bills. He went over them twice, while the partners, aghast, watched him. He thrust the bills into the old man’s half-reluctant hands.

“Now,” he said, “you hustle out and buy that cigar place. I hate to see a busted up old feller like you peddlin’ things in hotels and saloons. Always makes me think of what 

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