The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-05-09
A PIECE OF GOLD.

Whom Lucien Hem saw his last 10O-frant
note cripped by the book-keeper's rake
md rose from the roulette table, where he
had lost the last fragments of his little for
tune, collected for this supreme struggle
he felt giddy and thought he was going tc
fall.
With dizzy head and tottering legs he
went and threw himself down upon the
broad leathern settee surrounding the play
table.
For some minutes he gazed vacantly on
the olandestine gambling house in which
he had squandered the best years of his
youth; recognized the ravaged faces of the
gamblers, crudely lit by the three large
shaded lamps; listened to the light Jingle
OF geld On ..!is clloth~esssssa table; -feltthat
he was ruined, lost; recollected that he
had at home the pair of regulation pistols
which his father, Gen. Hem, then a simple
captain, had used SO we'll in the attack of
Zaatcha; then, overcome by fatigue. he
sank into a profound eleep.
When he arose, with a clammy mouth,
he saw by the clock that he had slept for
barely half an hour, and felt an imperious
need for breathing the night air. The clock
hands marked a quarter before midnight.
While rising and stretching his arms, Lu-
Glen remembered that it was Christmas eve,
and, by an ironic trick of memory. he saw
himself a little child, putting its shoes into
the chimney before going to bed.
At that moment old Dronski-a pillar of
the gaming house, the classic Pole, wearing
the %threadbare hooded wooden cloak, orna-
mented all over with grease stRinS-ap-
preached Lucien, and muttered a few words
in his eriasled beard: LEND me a 5-franc
piece, monsieur. It's now two days since
j have stirred out of the club, and for two
days the seventeen has never turned up.
Laugh at nue., if you like, but I'll suffer my
hand to be cut off if that number does not
turn up on tho stroke of midnight"
Lucien Hem shrugged his shoulders. He
had not even enough in his pocket to meet
this tax, which the frequenters of the place
called 1.-THE Poles hundred sous He
passed into the antechamber. took his hat
and fur coat. inc descended the stairs with
feverish rapidity.
Since four o'clock, when Lucien had shut
himself up in the gaming house, snow had
fallen heavily. and the street-~a street in
the centre of Paris, very narrow, and built
with high houses on either side-was COM
pIetely white.
In the calm sky, blus-b1ack, the cold stars
glittered.
The ruined gambler shuddered under his
furs, and walked away, his mind still tenn
ing with thoughts of despair, and more
than ever turning to the remembrance of
the box of pistols which awaited him in one
of his drawers; but after moving forward a
few steps, he stopped suddenly before a
heart-wsinging sight.
On the stone bench, placed according to
ole custom near the monumental door of a
mansion, a little girl of six or seven years
Of age, dressed in a'ragged black frock, was
sitting in the SNOW. She was sleeping, in
spite OF the cruel scold, in an attitude of
ffightful fatigue and exhaustion; her poor
little head and tiny shoulders pressed as if
they had sun into an angle of the wall.
and yepesing On the icy stone. One of her
wooden shoes had fallen from her foot,
: which hung helplessly and lugubriously be-
~fore her.
With a mechanical gesture, Lucien put
his hand to his. waistcoat pocket, but a.
moment afterwards he recollected that he
had not been able to find even a forgotten
piece of 20 sous, and had been obliged to
leave the club without giving the customary
'..tib" to the club attendant; yet, moved by
an instructive feeling of pity, he approached
the little girl, and might, perhaps, have
taken her in his arms and given her q
nights lodging, when, in the wooden shoe
which had slipped from her foot, he saw
something glitter.
He stopped; it was a gold coin.