Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/72



T this period of his history the colonel's exchequer must have been in a particularly depleted condition, for it was not a week after John Gault's visit that he again appeared at the office, and this time requested a loan of forty dollars.

Had the colonel, during this interview, exhibited some of that shamefaced and conscious embarrassment that the most hardened borrowers will show, his benefactor would have felt less miserably ill at ease. But the old man was as suave and affably benignant as if he were conferring a long-solicited favor. That there was something of shame in his barefaced assaults upon the purse of his daughter's friend seemed an idea that had never entered his mind. No disconcerting scruples marred his appreciation of his sudden good fortune. Pride was evidently a possession of which he was as poorly supplied as he was with the tangible goods of this world.