"No, I didn't--hang 'em! I'm like you, I owe them one. And I mean to pay them, with compound interest. And, if you like to say the word, I'll pay them that little lot you owe them too. Look here, Mr. Greenall, I don't mind owning that a keener lot of gentlemen than the gentlemen here I don't think I ever had to do with. I won't say they robbed me, but they certainly cut me up into very nice little pieces, and they handed me round. I've seldom seen any thing of the kind which was better done. But never mind--my turn's coming! I'm not fond of bragging--quite the other way. If it wasn't that I was in a hole, I wouldn't say a word. But it is the simple truth that, at all the things at which these fellows think they're dabsters, I'm as far ahead of them as they're ahead of you,--no offence intended. You can take my word for it that I know what I'm talking about. It doesn't follow because, just once in a way, they happened to muck up my book, that I'm a flat. As for being able to give Colson four hundred out of five hundred at billiards,--if I choose, and I shall choose, he's simply bound to lose. I don't mean to say that I'm a John Roberts, because I'm not. But I do know how to play, and that in a sense which Colson hasn't even begun to understand. I've heard that Mr. Colson hasn't behaved over well to you. I thought that you'd like to see him taken down a peg or two." I should. I should have liked to have seen more than one of them taken down a peg or two, though I said nothing of that to Mr. Johns. "How came you to match yourself, Mr. Johns, when you were aware that you were not in possession of the required stakes?" "I took it for granted that I should get the stakes from you." Mr. Johns was frank, at any rate. "From me? What claim did you suppose yourself to have on me?" "No claim; but you see, sir, they've had me, and they've had you. They've had both of us, in fact, pretty smartly. And I thought that you might like to be even with some of them, by deputy." By deputy. If it was workable, that was not a bad idea. I felt that I should like to be even with some of them, beginning, say, with Mr. Colson--how that man had squelched me beneath his elephantine foot! the brute!--even, as it were, by deputy. "What guarantee have I that you will not lose my money, as you already have lost your own?" "If we get up early, we shall have the billiard room all to ourselves. If you like, I will give you some idea of what I can do upon a billiard table."