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But that was not Billy’s way. This gig, four-square, blue-eyed man out of San Francisco could do anything but cadge. It wasn’t a question of morals, it was more a question of simplicity.

Billy’s morals had mostly been forgotten by Nature, or maybe they had been extracted by San Franciscans and shore-along toughs from Valparaiso up, anyhow and however that may be, the resulting vacuum seemed to have filled itself up with simplicity, not stupidity, just simplicity. The simplicity of a child that allowed him to go into the most desperate and questionable deals in ward politics and doubtful sea practice, wide-eyed, blue-eyed, and reproaching others for their moral lapses with the unchanging formula: “It don’t pay.”

“Crooked dealing don’t pay,” said Mr. Harman after some crooked deal had failed—never before.

Yet somehow, in some extraordinary way, Billy was lovable, there was nothing mean about him, and that was maybe why he couldn’t cadge, and he had behind those blue eyes and that honest-dog looking, tanned face, a power of cool, uncalculating daring that might have landed him anywhere if he had come on a decent jumping-off place.