exciting, and not likely to shrink in the telling. The youth of Moscow listened with open-mouthed admiration to one who, though born in their village, had seen so much of the world and broken all of the commandments. For his skill at cards they soon had not only admiration but dread. He had emptied the pockets of his companions by a kind of prestidigitation quite incomprehensible to them. He seemed to play fairly, but there was not a loafer in Moscow who had not become timid about playing with Dave; the long run of luck was ever on his side. It was much more amusing to his companions to hear him, with ugly winks and the complacent airs of a man who feels sure that he had cut his eye-teeth, tell how he had plucked others in gambling than to furnish him with new laurels at their own expense. On this particular evening Dave Sovine lounged on one of the counters, with a stack of unbleached "domestic" cloth for a bolster, while his bright patent-leather shoes were posed so as to be in plain view. Thus comfortably fixed, he bantered the now wary and rather impecunious "boys" for a game of poker, euchre, seven-up, or anything to pass away the time. George Lockwood, as representing the proprietors of the store, sat on a ledge below the shelves with his feet braced on a box under the counter. He was still smarting from his discomfiture with Rachel Albaugh, and he was also desirous of investigating Dave Sovine's play without risking his own "fips" and "bits" in the game. So, after revolving the matter in his mind as he did every matter, he said to Dave, with a half-sinister smile: "Tom Grayson's upstairs in Blackman's office. Maybe you might get up a game with him. He plays a stiff hand, and he a'n't afraid of the Ole Boy at cards, or anything else, for that matter." "You call him down," said Dave, winking his eye significantly, and involuntarily disclosing a vein of exultant deviltry which made the cool-blooded Lockwood recoil a little; however, George felt that it would be a satisfaction to see Tom's pride reduced. Lockwood got down off the ledge in a sluggish way, and walked around the end of the counter to the stove-pipe which ran from the box-stove in the store up through the office above. "I say, Tom!" he called. "What?" came out of the pipe. "Dave Sovine says he can beat you at any game you choose. Come down and try him." Grayson was bending over a law-book with only a tallow candle for light. Studying the law of common carriers was, in his opinion, dull business for a fellow with good red blood in his veins. He heard the murmur of conversation below, and for the last half-hour he had longed to put the book up beside its sheepskin companions on the shelves and join the company in the store. This banter decided him.