"I heard Winnie sold her place." "Oh, yes," said Gibbs; "bought a little home in the swell part--quiet street and all that--and they’re living there happy as you please." "Well, that’s good," said Dean. "Steve and me was with the John Robinson show in the old days. He was holdin’ a board for the monte tickets, and old Pappy King was cappin’ for the game. I remember one night in Danville, Kentucky"--and Dean told another story. The stories were all alike, having for their theme the despoilment of some simpleton who had tried to beat Dean or his confederates at one of their own numerous games. "I was holding the shingle for Jim Steele when he was playing the broads, you understand. He was the greatest spieler ever. I can see him now, taking up the tickets, looking around and saying: ’Is there a speculator in the party?’" Dean’s face was alight with the excitement of dramatizing the long-past scene. He laid his stick on the bar and bent over, with his white fingers held as if they poised cards. He was a good mimic. One could easily imagine the scene on the trampled grass, with the white canvas tents of the circus for a background. "Dick Nolan and Joe Hipp were capping, and Dick would come up--he had the best gilly make-up in the world, you understand, a paper collar, a long linen duster and big green mush--he’d look over the cards--see?"--Dean leaned over awkwardly like a country-man, pointing with a crooked forefinger--"and then he’d say, ’I think it’s that one.’" His voice had changed; he spoke in the cracked tone of the farmer, and his little audience laughed. "Well, the guy hollers, you understand, but at the come-back they’re all swipes--working in the horse tents; you’d never know ’em. And then," Dean went on, with the exquisite pleasure of remembering, "old Ben Mellott was there working the send--you remember Ben, Dan?" Gibbs nodded. "Jake Rend was running the side-show, and old Jew Cohen had a dollar store--a drop-case, you know." Gibbs nodded again. Dean grew meditative, and a silence fell on the group. "We had a great crowd of knucks, too; the guns to-day are nothing to them. Those were the days, Dan. Course, there wasn’t much in it at that." Dean meditated over the lost days a moment, and then he grew cheerful again. "I met Luke Evans last fall, Dan," he began again. "In England. The major and I were running between London and Liverpool, working the steamer trains, and him and me--" And he was off into another story. Having taken up his English experience, Dean now told a number of vulgar stories, using the English accent, which he could imitate perfectly. While in the midst of one of them, he suddenly started at a footfall, and looked hastily over his shoulder. A man came in, glanced about, and came confidently forward. "Good morning, Danny," he said, in a tone of the greatest familiarity.