“‘I wouldn’t take it back,’ he said with a sneer, ‘if the game had been above board, but if, as you say, you have been sailing under false colors, I think I can take it without any loss of self-respect.’ And he pocketed the money which Harry pushed over to him, after deducting what he himself had put in. “It was the last game we ever played together, and we broke up with a feeling of constraint that we had never had before. Our good-nights were said in the usual words, but the tone was that of curious embarrassment. We could not feel the same toward either of the two, but I think we all felt far more respect for Harry than we did for George. “I am quite sure we all did after we read in the papers two weeks later that George had absconded with a considerable amount of the company’s money. It appeared from the published accounts that he had been a defaulter for some months, though he had concealed the fact by falsifying his books, so that he was really playing with stolen money when he pretended a superiority to Harry. “I never saw either of the two men again, and as I tell you, we never had another meeting of the club. As for me, I have never played poker since for any considerable stakes. When the game gets so large that it is a question of money instead of the fun of the game itself, I always drop out.” Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York Transcriber’s Notes Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Transcriber removed duplicate chapter headings. The floral decoration on the Title page represents a similar but angled decoration in the original book. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queer Luck, by David A Curtis