"Gad! your own fortune in love must be ill enough, Sir Arthur," said Beau Wilson, as he pushed back his chair during this little lull in the play of the evening. "And tell me why, Beau?" "Because of us all who have met here at the Green Lion these last months, not one hath ever had so steady a run of luck. Sure some fairy hath befriended thee. _Sept et le va, sept et le va_--I'll hear it in my ears to-night, even as Castleton sees the lap-dog. Man, you play as though you read the pack quite through." "Ah, then, you admit that there is some such thing as a talisman. I'll not deny that I have had one these last three evenings, but I feared to tell ye all, lest I might be waylaid and robbed of my good-luck charm." "Tell us, tell us, man, what it is!" cried Castleton. "_Sept et le va_ has not been made in this room before for many a month, yet here thou comest with the run of _sept et le va_ thrice in as many hours." "Well, then," continued Pembroke, still smiling, "I'll make a small confession. Here is my charm. Salute it!" He cast on the table the Indian moccasin which had been shown the same party at the Green Lion a few evenings before. Eager hands reached for it. "Treachery!" cried Castleton. "I bid Du Mesne four pounds for the shoe myself." "Oh ho!" said Pembroke, "so you too were after it. Well, the long purse won, as it doth ever. I secretly gave our wandering wood ranger, ex-galley slave of France, the neat sum of twenty-five pounds for this little shoe. Poor fellow, he liked ill enough to part with it; but he said, very sensibly, that the twenty-five pounds would take him back to Canada, and once there, he could not only get many such shoes, but see the maid who made this one for him, or, rather, made it for herself. As for me, the price was cheap. You could not replace it in all the Exchange for any money. Moreover, to show my canniness, I've won back its cost a score of times this very night." He laughingly extended his hand for the moccasin, which Wilson was examining closely. "'Tis clever made," said the latter. "And what a tale the owner of it carried. If half he says be true, we do ill to bide here in old England. Let us take ship and follow Monsieur du Mesne." "'Twould be a long chase, mayhap," said Pembroke, reflectively. Yet each of the men at that little table in the gaming room of the Green Lion coffee-house ceased in his fingering the cards, and gazed upon this product of another world. Pembroke was first to break the silence, and as he heard a footfall at the door, he called out: "Ho, fellow! Go fetch me another bottle of Spanish, and do not forget this time the brandy and water which I told thee to bring half an hour ago." The step came nearer, and as it did not retreat, but entered the room, Pembroke called out again: "Make haste, man, and go on!"