resources, only one ten dollar note, and he took out the crumpled paper and held it in his hand for a moment and looked at it, not to find the ten dollars, but the newspaper cutting. He started as if stung, stepped back and stood with his hand resting on the balustrade. The door opened and a man came out. Bodney spoke to him, and he halted. It was the offensive fellow with the white scar. "How did you come out?" The man opened both hands and raised them. He was not drunk now. He was sober and desperate. "They have ruined me," he said; "ruined me, and I don’t know what in the name of God to do. I’ll never play again as long as I live—I’d swear it on all the bibles in the world. Are you going to play?" "I was thinking about it." "I could have quit big winner. Say, have you got enough to stake me?" His eyes brightened, but the light went out when Bodney shook his head. "I’ve got just ten dollars." "Then you won’t last as long as a feather in hell." He went down the stairs, and Bodney continued to stand there, fighting against himself, with the newspaper cutting still in his hand. Suddenly, with his teeth set and both hands clenched, he ran down the stairs. At the door opening out upon the street he met the master of the game. "Won’t you come back and eat with us?" "No, I am in a hurry." The master of the game was astonished. The idea of a poker player being in a hurry to get away from the game was almost new to him—and it was new to Bodney. But he hastened on, not daring to look back lest he might find some new temptation beckoning him to return. Passing beyond the circle wherein the lodestone seemed to draw the hardest, he felt, upon looking back, that he had escaped and was beyond pursuit. It was now eleven o’clock, and the victory must have been won at about ten minutes to eleven. He had cause to remember this afterward, on the following day, when he believed that the cause of this sudden strength had been revealed to him. Howard was in the office when Bodney returned. "Well, did you pay your persistent creditor?" "There was none. Here is your money; I don’t need it now." "But you will, so you’d better keep it." "That’s a fact, and I don’t know how soon." "But you say there was none." "None. I’ll explain sometime, but I can’t now." Howard did not pursue the subject further, for his mind was on his own affairs. He had settled upon taking his departure the next morning, and now he looked about the old room with a feeling of sadness. He had consulted another physician who knew his father well, and had been informed that the old man might improve rapidly in the absence of his son. This made the young man wince, but he had told the doctor that his father seemed to have an especial antipathy to him. "It is one of the freaks peculiar to diseased minds to turn upon one who has been nearest," said the physician. Howard had repeated this to his mother, and frequently she remarked it as a discovery of her own.