“In fact, he won at everything he touched while he was here, but as a matter of course he soon became known, as a first-class crook is sure to, and he was obliged after a while to seek new pastures. So it came that the man who came and had fun with the New York sports for a season drifted away again without exciting any regrets by his departure.” His Last Sunday Game _HE WAS BETTING ON A JACK-POT WHEN THE YACHT UPSET_ “The closest call I ever had,” said the gray-haired young-looking man, “was in a game of poker, and, curiously enough, nobody called in that particular deal in which it occurred. In fact, nobody thought about it after the interruption until it was too late for a showdown and the chips had all disappeared, nobody knew where. It takes a pretty serious happening to destroy all interest in a game of poker just at the moment when somebody has raised the limit in a big jack-pot and each player is confident of winning. But this was a serious happening. It was about the most serious that I ever knew, and came near being a tragedy. “Perhaps you remember one summer about ten years ago when a succession of tremendous squalls struck the south side of Long Island on four successive Sundays. I think it was just ten years ago. “We had a club-house, eight or ten of us, that summer, which was located on Hicks’s Beach, on the extreme western end of the Great South Bay, not far from the Long Beach Hotel. It was about as unpretentious as any club-house need be, being only a shanty, but it was weather-proof, and with cots and hammocks we made ourselves thoroughly comfortable when we slept ashore. More often we would sleep on board the little sloop yacht that we had chartered for the summer, for we used to cruise through the entire day, using the club-house as a rendezvous. It was one of the jolliest and most economical seasons I ever enjoyed. “We all knew something about sailing--I least of all--but the Commodore, as we all called him, was the best amateur sailor I ever knew, so, naturally, we made him skipper, and nobody else assumed or felt any responsibility when he was aboard.