Chapter X. What Came to Slavin - Page 2

write, or play games, according to fancy.

But Craig felt that the success or failure of the scheme would largely depend upon the character of the Resident Manager, who, while caring for reading-room and hall, would control and operate the important department represented by the coffee-room.

'At this point the whole business may come to grief,' he said to Mrs. Mavor, without whose counsel nothing was done.

'Why come to grief?' she asked brightly.

'Because if we don't get the right man, that's what will happen,' he replied in a tone that spoke of anxious worry.

'But we shall get the right man, never fear.' Her serene courage never faltered. 'He will come to us.'

Craig turned and gazed at her in frank admiration and said--

'If I only had your courage!'

'Courage!' she answered quickly. 'It is not for you to say that'; and at his answering look the red came into her cheek and the depths in her eyes glowed, and I marvelled and wondered, looking at Craig's cool face, whether his blood were running evenly through his veins. But his voice was quiet, a shade too quiet I thought, as he gravely replied--

'I would often be a coward but for the shame of it.'

And so the League waited for the man to come, who was to be Resident Manager and make the new enterprise a success. And come he did; but the manner of his coming was so extraordinary, that I have believed in the doctrine of a special providence ever since; for as Craig said, 'If he had come straight from Heaven I could not have been more surprised.'

While the League was thus waiting, its interest centred upon Slavin, chiefly because he represented more than any other the forces of the enemy; and though Billy Breen stood between him and the vengeance of the angry men who would have made short work of him and his saloon, nothing could save him from himself, and after the funeral Slavin went to his bar and drank whisky as he had never drunk before. But the more he drank the fiercer and gloomier he became, and when the men drinking with him chaffed him, he swore deeply and with such threats that they left him alone.

It did not help Slavin either to have Nixon stride in through the crowd drinking at his bar and give him words of warning.

'It is not your fault, Slavin,' he said in slow, cool voice, 'that you and your precious crew didn't sent me to my death, too. You've won your bet, but I want to say, that next time, though you are seven to one, or ten times that, when any of you boys offer me a drink I'll take you to mean fight, and I'll not disappoint you, and some one will be killed,' and so saying he strode out again, leaving a mean-looking crowd of men behind him. All who had not been concerned in the business at Nixon's shack expressed approval of his position, and hoped he would 'see it through.'

But the impression of Nixon's words upon Slavin was as