"It seems that the night before, I had been tiger hunting in the jungle down at Honest John Donohue's. Of course I should have knowed better than to go up against a game run by anybody calling hisself Honest John. Them complimentary monakers always work with the reverse English. You are walking along and you see a gin-mill across the street with a sign over the door which says it's Smiling Pete's Place, and you cross over and look in, and behind the bar is an old guy who ain't heard anything that really pleased him since the Martinique disaster. He's standing there with his lip stuck out like a fender on a street car, and a bung starter handy, just hoping that somebody will come in and start to start something. That's Smiling Pete. As for this here Donohue, he's so crooked he can't eat nothing such as stick candy and cheese straws without he gets cramps in his stomach. He'd take the numbers off your house. That's why they call him Honest John. I know all this, good and well, but what's a feller going to do when his is the only place in town that's open? You've got to play somewheres, ain't you? Somehow, I always was sort of drawed to faro. "Well, you know the saying--one man's meat is another's pizen. He was my pizen and I certainly was his meat. So now, I ain't got nothing in my pockets except the linings. "I tells the Sweet Caps Kid just how it was--how right up to the very last minute I kept expecting the luck to turn and how even then I mighta got it all back if the game-keeper hadn't been so blamed unreasonable and mercenary. When my last chip is gone I holds up a finger for a marker and tells him I'll take another stack of fifty, all blues this time, but he only looks at me sort of chilly and distrustful and remarks in a kind of a bored way that there's nothing doing. "'That'll be all right,' I says to him. 'I'll see you to-morrow.' "'No, you wont,' he says, spiteful-like. "'Why,' I says, 'wont you be here to-morrow?' "'Oh, yes,' he says, 'we'll be here to-morrow, but you wont.' "'Is that so?' I says, sarcastical. 'Coming in,' I says, 'I thought I seen the word _Welcome_ on the doormat.' "'Going out,' he says, 'you'll notice that, spelled backward, it's a French word signifying _Mind Your Step_.' "And while I'm thinking up a proper comeback for that last remark of his'n somebody hands me my hat, and in less'n a minute, seems-like, I'm out in the street keeping company with myself.