I was a "flitter" of the first water, and after I had been in Fort Worth for a very short while I became possessed of a desire to see something of the far famed border towns along the Rio Grande frontier. So I went south to a town called Hallville, and found it a typical tough frontier town. I landed there all right enough and then proceeded to gently strand. Work was not to be had, money I had none, and my predicament can be imagined. Many of you have doubtless been on the frontier and know what these places are. There was the usual number of gambling dens, dance halls and saloons, and of course they had their variety theatre. Ever go into one of the latter places? The first thing that greets your eye is a big black and white sign "Buy a drink and see the show." Inside, at one end, is the long wooden bar, presided over by some thug of the highest order, with a big diamond stuck in the centre of a broad expanse of white shirt front. At the other end is the so-called stage, while scattered about indiscriminately are the tables and chairs. The air is filled—yea, reeking—with the fumes of bad whiskey, stale beer, and the odor of foul smelling cheap tobacco smoke, and through all this haze the would-be "show," goes on, and the applause is manifested by whistles, cat calls, the pounding of feet on the floor and glasses on the tables. Occasionally some artist will appear who does not seem to strike the popular fancy and will be greeted by a beer glass or empty bottle being fired at his or her head.

"Oh! come now, boy, don't get huffy. You've got an honest face and appear to be in trouble. What is it? Out with it. You're evidently a tenderfoot and this hell-hole of vice isn't a place for a boy of your years. What's your name? Come over here at this table and sit down and tell me."

Something in his bluff hearty manner gave me hope and after sitting down, I said.

"My name is Martin Bates. I'm a telegraph operator by profession and blew into this town this morning on my uppers. I can't get work and I haven't a red cent to my name. It is necessary for me to live, and as I can sing a little bit, I came in here to see if I could get a job warbling. I won't beg or steal, and there is no one here I can borrow from. There's my story. Not a very pleasant one is it?"

"There may have been worse. How long since you've had anything to eat."

"Nine o'clock this morning," I grimly replied.

"Good Lord, that's twelve hours ago. Come on with me out of here and I'll fix you up."

Meekly I followed my new found friend. I was sick at heart, weary and worn out in body and I didn't care a rap whether school kept or not; anything would be better than my present situation. He took me about three blocks up the main street and we went into a suite of beautifully furnished rooms. He rang a bell, a darkey came in, and it wasn't long before I had a lunch in front of me fit for the gods, and I may add it didn't take me many minutes to get outside of it. My friend watched me narrowly while I was eating, and when I had finished he said,

"Now youngster, you're all tired out. You go to bed in the next room and get a good night's sleep. In the morning we'll see what we can do for you, but one thing is certain, you're not going into that vile hole of a Palace Theatre again. Somewhere in this world you have a father and mother who are praying for you this night. Don't make a slip in your pathway in life and break their hearts. Everything is safe and quiet here and no one will disturb you until I come in the morning."

There was a peculiar earnestness in his voice as he spoke that was very convincing, and as he rose to go out, I meekly said,

"What's your name, mister?"

"Bill Bradley," he answered with a queer smile. "Now don't you ask any more questions tonight," and with that he was gone.

I went to bed almost sick from my exposure and lack of food, and just as the old sand man of childhood's happy days began to sprinkle his grains in my eyes, I heard, way off in the distance, a peculiar click and a drawling voice calling off some numbers. "Four." "Sixteen." "Thirty-three." "Seventy-eight." "Ten." "Twenty-six," and then, a great shout arose and some one called out "KENO." Ah! I was near a gambling house, but I was too tired to care, nature asserted herself, and I gently crossed the river into the land of Nod.

The next morning I was really sick with a high fever, and when Bill came in I was well nigh loony.

"Hello," he said, "this won't do. Tom, I say, you Tom, go and tell Doctor Bailey I want him here quick. D—n quick. Do you hear?" and black Tom answered, "Yas, suh."

To be brief, I was three weeks on my back, and bluff old Bill Bradley nursed me like a loving mother would a sick child. Day and night he hung over me, never a thing did I need but what he procured for me, and one day after the fever had left me and I was sitting up by an open window, I said,

"Mr. Bradley, what do you do for a living?"

"Boy," he replied with a flushed face, "I am sorry you asked that question, but sooner or later you would have heard it and I'd a great deal rather tell you about it myself. I'm a gambler and these three rooms adjoin my place which is called the "Three Nines," and then he told me the story of his life. He was a son of a fine Connecticut family, a graduate of Harvard, and in his day had been a very able young lawyer with brilliant prospects, but one night, he went out with a crowd of roistering chaps, the lie was passed, and—it was the old story,—he came to Texas for a refuge. The great civil war was just over, the country in a chaotic state, and there he had remained ever since. Thrown with wild, uncouth men, and being reckless in the extreme, he opened a gambling house.

"Why did you take this great interest in me?" I asked.

"Look here, young chap, you are altogether too inquisitive. I've got an old father and mother way up in Ball Brooke, Connecticut, whose hearts have been broken by my actions, and when I saw you in that hellish den of vice you looked so out of place that I determined to save you. It was impulse, my boy, and then again, it may have been the remembrance of the one, at whose knee I used to lisp, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'"

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