With but one table, whereat I would preside as dealer, I required no multitude to man The Shotgun. I called to my aid three gentlemen of fortune--seedy and in want they were and glad to earn a dollar. One was to be sentinel at the door, one would perch Argus-like on the lookout’s stool, while the third,--an old suspicious camp-follower of Chance,--kept the case. This latter, cautious man! declined my service unless I put steel bars on the only door, and as well on the only window. These he conceived to be some safeguard against invasions. They were not; but I spent money to put them in place to the end that his fluttered nerves be stilled and he won to my standard. And at that, he later pursued his business as case-keeper with an ear on the door and an eye on the small barred window, sitting the while half aloof from the table and pushing the case-buttons as the cards fell from the box with a timid forefinger and as though he proposed no further immersion in current crime than was absolutely demanded by the duties of his place. He sat throughout the games a picture of apprehension. For myself, and to promote my profits, I gave both my people and my customers every verbal bond of safety. The story went abroad that I was “protected;” that no wolf of the police dared so much as glance at flock of mine. The Shotgun was immune of arrest, so ran the common tale, and as much as leer and look and smile and shrug of shoulder might furnish them I gave the story wings. This public theory of safety was necessary to success. In the then hectic conditions, and briskly in the rear of a stern suppression of resorts that had flourished for decades unshaken of the law, wanting this feeling of security there would have come not one dollar to take its hopeful chances at The Shotgun. As it was, however, the belief that I lived amply “protected” took prompt deep root. And the fact that The Shotgun opened in the face of storms which smote without pity upon others, was itself regarded as proof beyond dispute. No one would court such dangers unless his footing were as unshakable as Gibraltar. Thereupon folk with a heart for faro came blithely and stood four deep about my one table; vast was the business I accomplished and vast were the sums changed in. And behold! I widely prospered. When I founded The Shotgun, I was richer of hope than of money; but fortune smiled and within a fortnight my treasure was told by thousands. Indeed, my patrons played as play those who are starved to gamble; that recess of faro enforced of the police had made them hawk-hungry. And my gains rolled in.