“Game's mighty full, genelmens--but they's always room fur one mo'. Step right in and wait yo' turn,” Babe would say, ushering in the latest arrival. Babe was almost as happy as if he had been shooting himself. As I say, they kept coming. At length, a few minutes before midnight, when the pile of silver under the King's hands had grown from a molehill to a mountain and the wadded paper money made a small shock of yellow-and-green fodder upon the green pasture of the table-top, came still another, and this one most strangely burdened. Very mousily indeed this eleventh-hour visitor ascended the steps, and first trying the doorknob, knocked with a fumbling knock against the pine panels. Babe drew back the bolt and peered out into the darkness at the solitary figure dimly seen. “Game's mighty full, genelmen,” he began the formula of greeting, “but you kin----” Babe began it but he never finished it. Some-. thing long and black, something slim and fearsome--yes, most fearsome--slid through the opening, and grazed his nose so that the little darky, stricken limp, fell back. “Please, suh, boss,” he begged, “fur Gawd's sake don't shoot--don't shoot!” Babe started his prayer in a babble but he ended it with a shriek--a shriek so imploringly loud that all there, however intent they might be, were bound to hear and take notice. Over the heads of his patrons Highpockets looked, and he stiffened where he stood. They all looked; they all stiffened. There was just cause. Inside the door opening was a masked figure levelling down a double-barrelled shotgun upon them. Lacking the mask and the shotgun, and lacking, too, a certain rigid and purposeful pose which was most clearly defined in all its lines, the figure would have lacked all menace, indeed would have seemed to the casual eye a most impotent and grotesque figure. For it was but little better than five feet in stature and not overly broad. It wore garments too loose for it by many inches. The sleeve ends covered the small hands to the finger ends, and the trousers wrinkled, accordion fashion, to the tips of the absurdly small toes. An old slouch hat threatened to slip all the way down over the wearer's face. The mask was a flimsy thing of black cambric, but the eyeholes, strange to say, were neatly worked with buttonhole stitching. From beneath the hatbrim at the back a hank of longish hair escaped. On the floor, a yard or so before the apparition where it had been dropped, rested an ancient black handbag unlatched and agape.