There was no evening session in the gymnasium this Saturday night and Chick had tentatively agreed to accompany Bert and two others to a lecture in the auditorium. He wasn’t particularly interested in excavations in Central America, but Bert had pleaded and he had consented--with reservations. Yet when Bert tried to find him at eight o’clock he wasn’t to be found, and no one that Bert enquired of could supply tidings of him. Bert suspected that a trip to Mooney’s would reveal the truant, but there was no time for that; nor was there much inclination. Bert had become rather disgusted with his chum’s inability to tear himself from the society of Lester Devore. Chick was a little out of patience with himself that evening on the same score. It was foolish to go back to Mooney’s and get plucked again, for he would be plucked without a doubt. The idea that he would one day succeed in winning back the money he had lost--quite a considerable sum by now, even if not all paid--had had to be abandoned. Chick was at last satisfied that Devore was a better pool player than he was. Also, he had a sneaking suspicion that Devore had let him win on the infrequent occasions when he had won merely to coax him on to increasing his wagers. He wasn’t convinced of it, for Devore could be disarmingly frank and ingenuous when he tried to be, and it was hard sometimes not to credit the sincerity of his regret when the luck continued in his favor. To-night Chick didn’t mean to play. He couldn’t afford to, for one thing, for he had just twenty cents in his pocket. He meant to look on awhile. That would be a lot more interesting than hearing some bespectacled old geezer ramble on about the Incas, or whoever the folks were that used to live a couple of billion years ago down in--oh, that place where the chewing gum comes from! Besides, Chick was in low spirits to-night, anyway, and he sighed for lights and laughter and the familiar sound of the clicking balls. Of course Les might dun him for the money he still owed, but a lot of good it would do him! You can’t get blood from a stone!