Bodney took the bank note and went out. The poker microbe was not so easily to be exterminated. It had suggested to Bodney that the only way to replace the money taken from the Judge’s safe was to play poker. And, why not play? He might win—he had won once, and what the cards had done they would do again. He remembered the courtesies that had been shown him at the club, the congratulation of the man at the desk when he won and the sympathy when he lost. "Couldn’t make ’em stick, eh? When a man gets the hands beaten you do, he’s got to lose his money. There’s nothing to it. But you’ll get ’em yet—you play as good game as any of them." A man of sense could see that it was a losing game from the start, no matter how honestly conducted. And Bodney, going to the club before business put on its cheerful countenance, had seen them counting the swallowings of the ever hungry box, the rake-off, the unsatisfied maw. A fairly active game would average for the house at least eight dollars an hour, so that in the end every man must be a loser. He knew all this as the others knew it, but the microbe squirmed and made him itch. He walked toward the Wexton Club, not in a rush, for he was still fighting. Speculation urged him to play one more time, and to realize during the game that it was the last. The hunger for play was surely dying; then, why kill it? why not let it die of its own accord? Then came the memory of nights of distress, the nervous sweat of anxiety in the street, scanning faces, looking for money. He turned aside, went into a hotel and sat down. Two men were talking of a defaulter. "Yes, sir," said one of them, "everybody had confidence in him—the firm trusted him implicitly; but he embezzled and must go up for it." He mentioned the embezzler’s name, and Bodney recognized it as that of a gentlemanly young fellow well known at the Wexton. He had come under an assumed name, but had thrown off this weak disguise, to indorse a check. So the players, who gossip among themselves, knew his real name, but addressed him as Jones. Bodney continued to listen. "I understand," said one of the men, "that the place where he went is a regular robbers’ den." Bodney knew better than this; he knew that in the fairness, the courtesy, the good nature of the place lay its greatest danger. Men swore, it was true; cursed their luck and called upon a neighbor to testify to the fact that he had never seen such hands beaten; but for the most part, the atmosphere was genial, the talk bright and with a crispness rarely found in society. He resented this misrepresentation, and was even on the point of speaking when the men walked off. Soon afterward he went out, though not in the direction of the club; he circled round and round, like a deer, charmed by a snake; but after a time he saw the stairway, dusty and grim, rise before him. In the hall above, just as he was about to ring the bell, he thought of his short