Harry stuffed the gold back into the bag. He snatched the cards from Hugh's hand and a box of waxen envelope wafers from his desk. There was a strange light in his eye, a tremor in his fingers. "It is I who play with money!" he said. "My gold against your counters! Each of those hundred red disks represents a day of your life--a day, do you understand?--a red day of your sin! A day of yours against a double-eagle! What you win you keep. But for every counter I win, you shall pay me one straight, white day, a clean day, lived for decency and for the right!" He was the old Satan Sanderson now, with the blood bubbling in his veins--the Satan Sanderson who could "talk like Bob Ingersoll or an angel," as the college saying was--the cool, daring, enigmatical Abbot of The Saints, primed for any audacity. It was the old character again, but curiously changed. The new overlaid it. Under the spur of some driving impulse the will was travelling along a disused and preposterous channel to a paramount end. Hugh's eyes were fastened on the gold in Harry's fingers. Two thousand dollars! If luck came his way he could go far on that--far enough to escape the nameless terror that pursued him in every shadow. Money against red wafers? Why, it was plenty if he won, and if he lost he had staked nothing. What a fool Harry was! Harry saw the shrewd, calculating look that came to his eyes. He caught his wrist. "Not here!" he said hoarsely. He flung open the chapel door and pushed him inside. He seized one of the altar candles, lit it with a match and stuck it upright in its own wax on the small communion table that stood just inside the altar-rail, with the cards, the red wafers and the bags of coin. He dragged two chairs forward. "Now," he said in a strained voice, "put up your hand--your right hand--and swear before this altar, on the gambler's honor you boast of, win or lose, to abide by this game!" Hugh shrank. He was superstitious. The calculating look had fled. He glanced half fearfully about him--at Harry's white face--at the high altar with its vases of August lilies--at the great rose-window, now a mass of white, opaque blotches on which the three black crosses stood out with weird distinctness--at the lurking, unlighted shadows in the corners. He looked longingly at the gold, shining yellow in the candle-light. It fascinated him. He lifted his hand. It was trembling. "I swear I will!" he said. "I'll stand by the cards, Harry, and for every day you win, I'll walk a chalk line--so help me God!" Harry Sanderson sat down. He emptied one of the bags at his elbow, and pushed the box of wafers across the table. He shuffled the cards swiftly and cut. "Your deal!" he said. CHAPTER XI HALLELUJAH JONES TAKES A HAND