For card-playing--and that means plain poker and nothing else--was all they did at Dyball's Club-room, except to consume the vile liquor and smoke _Regalia de Avenue B_ cigars served over the bar; but, although limited in variety, the entertainment furnished made up in quantity what it otherwise lacked; nor did the votaries at the Dyball shrine often separate until morning had well-nigh dawned. Upon the evening referred to in the last chapter, at a few minutes after eleven o'clock, just as the sidewalks along the brilliantly-lighted Bowery were beginning to whiten with what promised to be a heavy fall of snow, there entered Dyball's club room no less celebrated a person than Mr. Detective Cutts, a young but already popular special on the force of the New York police. He was in citizen's dress, of course--in fact, the same in which we have already met him on this night once before--and as he pushed his way among the card tables, a long cigar stuck in one corner of his mouth, his cane under his left arm, and his Derby hat set rakishly upon the side of his head, several of the small clerks rejoicing in a speaking acquaintance with so prominent an official, greeted him with an air of great respect, their less fortunate companions regarding them with feelings of envy not unmingled with awe. But the young detective paid little attention to any of the players at the card tables. Pushing his way among them through the stifling atmosphere, fairly blue with tobacco smoke, and reeking with the stale odors of whisky and beer, he approached a small table in a remote corner of the room, where sat four young men who, if the chips upon its green baize top and the anxious faces of the players themselves could be taken as a guide, were indulging in a pretty stiff sort of game. "Frank, I want to see you," he said, quietly, placing his hand lightly upon the shoulder of the youngest man of the four. "All right, Billy, I'll be with you when I finish this hand." "I'll wait for you in the wine-room." "Very good. Two jacks and two queens--I'll take that pot, boys. I'll be with you in a second, Billy--just one hand more." It is Frank Mansfield, and no one else, we are sorry to say, who again deals the cards around, and with flushed face, being evidently considerably the worse for drink, a moment later joins Detective Cutts in the private wine-room, to the left of Mr. Dyball's bar. What brings the boy to a place like this? Disappointment and a fatal love of exciting pleasures, yielded to too often--far too often--in the past. Firm in his resolution to reform his ways, Frank, who loved the daughter of Elijah Callister, and was devotedly loved by her in return, had, at her own suggestion, asked of the stock operator the hand of his daughter in marriage with the ill success already told.