In the course of his wanderings he came across numbers of the old companions of his pool-room days. Few of them had changed, but for the worse. Most of them were penniless, hungry and threadbare, but still the victims of the hopeless vice, and whenever fortune threw in their way a dollar, it went into the insatiable maw of the race-tracks. Checkers noted and was warned; and to their earnest solicitations to "play their good things" he pointed them to their own condition--a pertinent and unanswerable argument. But though never so careful the time came apace when his little hoard was all but exhausted. His treasured keepsake he still vowed nothing should make him part with. "If I 've got to starve," he grimly resolved, "it might as well be a week or two earlier as later--but I 'll keep Pert's gold piece." That same day he received from Pert a letter full of encouragement, but pleading with him, as he loved her, to write. "All in the world that I have to look forward to now, Checkers, dear," she said, "is your letters; and you can 't imagine how disappointed I am, and how I worry for fear you are sick, or something, as the days go by, and no word comes from you." Standing by the window in his dismal boarding-house room Checkers read the letter over and over. Meditatively he examined his pockets--nothing! nothing but the gold piece. Something must be done. There were a number of garments hanging on the wall, among them an overcoat. "I can do without that," he said, with a shiver. Half an hour later, richer by a few pieces of silver, he stood in a telegraph-office, penning a message to Pert. "Letter received," he wrote. "Am well, but no luck. Will write to-day. Checkers."