Goyle was but an indifferent player. He well knew the value of a hand, but was too impatient to wait. But no despair fell upon him when he lost. He did not look forward to a time when circumstances or the force of his own resolution might set him beyond the temptations of the game, but to the time when luck might give him enough money to put him in the game. Bodney, however, was bound soul and body. He could hardly think of anything else. Dozing to sleep he saw aces and kings; asleep, he drew to flushes and straights. In his sleep he might win, but only in his sleep. His soul seemed to have been created for this one debasing passion. It was his first, for though impressionable, no enthusiasm had ever mastered him, and love had never set his heart aflame. But now he was an embodiment of raging poker, not for gain, but for the thrill, the drunkenness of playing. His bank account, never large, was gone. For himself and for Goyle he had taken small sums of money from the Judge’s safe, and had lived in the terror of being confronted with the theft. And he actually believed that had the old man accused him or even strongly suspected him he would have killed himself. Suspicion was now averted, but at the cost of what infamy! He could face Howard; he could endure with a show of self-control the agonized countenance of the old man; but remorse gnawed him like a rat. It was not to be supposed that Florence would be enlightened as to the coolness which, of necessity, must fall between Howard and the Judge, but it could not be otherwise than a grief to her. He could look forward and see the wonder in her eyes, and then the sorrow that must come to her. It is one of the misfortunes of a weak man to have a strong conscience, a conscience with not enough of forecast to prevent a crime, but one which agonizes when a crime has been committed. His only solace was to play. Then his mind was chained to the game, the dealing of the cards, the scanning of his hand, to the thrill of winning, the dull oppression of losing. Upon entering the club he had been surprised to see so many old and venerable looking men sitting about the tables. One had been a prominent lawyer; another, a doctor, had turned from a fine practice to waste his substance and the remainder of his days. There was good humor, an occasional story of brightness and color, but upon the whole the place was sad, everyone seeming to recognize that he was a hopeless slave. The scholar turned poker-player, thinks and talks poker. He forgets his grammar, and puts everything in the present tense. "How did you come out last night?" someone asks, and he answers, "I lose." Many of those men would not have gone to a "regular" gaming house; they would not have played faro or roulette, but the blight of poker fell upon them, to weaken them morally, to make them liars. Sometimes an old fellow, getting up broke, would turn moralist. One said to Bodney: "The chips