“We were both tired waiting, and there was nothing better to do in the place, so we both sauntered to the room just back of the bar. The door was wide open, and we saw card-playing inside. Three men were playing poker, and we stood for a few moments looking on. One of the three was a comical-looking old fellow, evidently a superannuated gambler. He must have been seventy years old, and his hands were very shaky, but I could not make up my mind whether he was palsied or had been drinking, or whether he was assuming decrepitude in order to watch the cards more carefully as he dealt them. The latter seemed likely enough, and I suspected marked cards, so I pleaded ignorance of the game when one of the other players--the proprietor of the place, as I learned later--looked up with a pleasant smile and suggested that perhaps my friend and I would like to join in. “My ‘friend,’ as he called him--I didn’t even know his name--was willing enough, and he sat in. I stood by, smoking and looking on for a few minutes, though I pretended not to be watching the game very closely. You can’t be too careful about observing the etiquette of the place you’re in, as I have always noticed, no matter what place it is, and the people around a card table are always liable to resent an outsider’s interest if it even borders on inquisitiveness. Where the resentment is liable to be expressed with a knife or a pistol, a wise man avoids showing his interest if he has any. “In this case I hadn’t a great deal. I saw the game was crooked, but it made no difference to me whether the other stranger knew it or not. If he did it was dog eat dog, and if he didn’t he deserved to lose for playing with strangers in such a place. However, I noticed pretty soon that the old fellow, whom the others called Major, and the proprietor, whom they all addressed as Pete, were looking uneasily at me and at each other from time to time, and that the third player, whose back was turned toward me, was making an ostentatious show of hiding his cards from me, as if he suspected or feared me and wanted me to know it. Accordingly I thought the wisest thing for me was to stroll back to the front room and treat the bartender. “While we were drinking, another man came in. He wore no coat, vest, or hat. He was, I think, the handsomest man I ever saw, though he was slightly flushed with liquor; not drunk, by any means, but he had evidently been drinking. He was a little above the medium height, with a symmetrical form, magnificent chest and shoulders, and the easy motion and graceful carriage of a skilled athlete. He passed directly to the card-room, nodding to the barkeeper and merely glancing at me, and I heard him say: “‘Do you want another in the game?’