Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/12

Rh He spoke in a rapid, excited tone, with a hard, petulant voice.

"You 'll think me crazy, I suppose. Well, I shall be soon. Will you lend me a hundred dollars?"

"Who are you? What is your trouble?" Roger asked.

"My name would tell you nothing. I 'm a stranger here. My trouble,—it 's a long story! But it 's grievous, I assure you. It 's pressing upon me with a fierceness that grows while I sit here talking to you. A hundred dollars would stave it off,—a few days at least. Don't refuse me!" These last words were uttered half as an entreaty, half as a threat. "Don't say you have n't got them,—a man that wears such pretty gloves! Come; you look like a good fellow. Look at me! I 'm a good fellow, too. I don't need to swear to my being in distress."

Lawrence was touched, disgusted, and irritated. The man's distress was real enough, but there was something horribly disreputable in his manner. Roger declined to entertain his request without learning more about him. From the stranger's persistent reluctance to do more than simply declare that he was from St. Louis, and repeat that he was in a tight place, in a d—d tight place, Lawrence was led to believe that he had been dabbling in crime. The more he insisted upon some definite statement of his circumstances, the more fierce and peremptory became the other's petition. Lawrence was before all things deliberate and perspicacious; the last man in the world to be hustled and bullied. It was quite out of his nature to do a thing without distinctly