The horses had remained in the stables, the dogs in the kennels, and the fox in the chicken-coop. I stole out during luncheon to take a look at Master Reynard. He looked shamefaced and bedraggled enough, shut up in that coop. I felt sorry for him, and told Mrs. Chadwick so. "At least you might have given him a chicken for company," I said. "He looked disgusted with life." Mrs. Chadwick smiled and remarked that she would see that Master Reynard had his chicken. "Do you think he would prefer it broiled or baked?" From then on I had played ping-pong, bridge and billiards, and made violent love to three or four married women because it was safe, and easy, and politic--and exciting. I had an idea for a story, but needed a married woman's opinion as to how it should properly end. The end was still hidden in a nebulous uncertainty as the colonel (our host) led us men into the armory, with its huge fireplace, its long basswood table upon which we had at various times carved our initials, its gunracks and trophies of the chase. A servant passed around fine Scotch and brandy and soda, with which we proceeded to tonic our appetites; for dinner was to be announced within an hour. I took out my penknife and went on with my uncompleted carving. Renwood, who owned a fine racing-stable, brought up the subject which had interested us during the mail hour that morning: the losses which Cranford had suffered in an exclusive gambling house in New York City. "Thirty thousand is a fat lump to lose this side of the Atlantic," Renwood observed. "Not beyond the Rockies," added Collingwood, who had done some fancy mining in Nevada. "I saw Judge Blank lose seventy-five thousand at faro one night in Carson City." "What did Cranford play,--roulette or faro?" I asked. "The papers say roulette," replied Renwood. "It's a bad game. There is some chance at faro, if the game is square. But roulette; bah! It is plain robbery." "The blind Madonna of the Pagan, as Stevenson called chance," mused the colonel, lighting a cigar. "I often wonder if gambling is not as much a particle of our blood as salt. Perhaps you have all wondered why I never have kept a racing-stable, why I play bridge and poker for fun. I remember--" Chairs moving noisily in the colonel's direction interrupted him. I doubled up my knife and carried my Scotch to his end of the table. "If it's a story, Colonel," said Old Fletcher, navy, retired, "let's have it." The colonel took out his watch and eyed it critically. "We have just three-quarters of an hour. Did you ever hear of how I broke one of the roulette banks at Monte Carlo?" "Why, you old reprobate!" exclaimed Fletcher; "you've just told us that you never gambled." "I merely said that I do not," replied the colonel. "Broke the bank?" cried Renwood. "You never told me about that." "I have never told any one. I ought not to tell you--" "You can't back out of it now," said I.