So I looked around in search of distraction. Five deep they stood around the faro and roulette layouts. Dealers looked like a Turkish bath from raking in money and shovin’ over chips. One fellow at the faro table had more’n six bushel of checks and was betting with a shovel. I made for the poker-rooms. Both locked. I hammers. “Shove your money under the door,” yells some one inside, “and go away.” Here was a fine how-de-do. Six months’ wages in my pocket and no action in sight. I went out in front to hear myself think. On the porch sat a man, unostentatious, hugging his knee, observing of the moon. I shoved a cigar at him. He nods, sticks it in his face, and hands me up matches over his shoulder. I likes his looks. And his sayin’ nothing sounded good, too, for my ear-drums were jarred clear to my ankles. I found out later that he wasn’t always silent. He was a sort of human layer-cake that way--big slabs of talk and thin streaks of keeping still. He didn’t look quite like a cow-boy. Cow-boys’ eyes is all puckered up by sun and wind. Nor quite like a miner. His hands was white but they wasn’t tin-horn’s hands, not by no means. He wasn’t drunk, and I couldn’t understand him at all, so I felt around. “Stranger?” says I. He nods. “Miner?” “Once.” “Cow-boy?” “Once. Everything else--once. Just now I am a numismatist.” I set down by him to show that didn’t make no difference to me. “Is it--very bad?” I says, kinder solemn and hushed-like. “A collector of rare coins,” he explains, laughing. His laugh was good, too. “Oh--I see. Got any of them with you?” “Just one. Be careful of it,” he says, and hands it to me. I holds it up to the light. ’Twas a common old iron dollar. “Broke?” He straightened up indignantly. “Not on your life--that’s no counterfeit!” he says. I liked him. I felt friendly. My experience is that the difference between the friend that can help you but won’t and the enemy that would hurt you but can’t isn’t worth notice. So I dug. When I gave his dollar back I slid five yellow twenties with it. He looks ’em over carefully, feeling of them, edges and both sides, with his finger-tips. “Very interesting,” he says. “Very beautiful. How clear the lettering is!” And he hands ’em back. “They’re yours, Stranger,” says I. “For your collection.” He swells up. “Not much. I’d beg before I’d accept charity.” “You don’t understand me,” I says, sparring for time. “I meant as a sporting venture. I’m superstitious. Men with a wad always lose it. So why shouldn’t a broke man win? Take it and win us a home.” “Oh, that’s different,” says Stranger. “I accept with pleasure--the more so as I have an infallible system of winning at roulette, founded on long observation.” “Yes?” says I, beginning to feel sorry for my hundred. “Yes. I have observed that, if you play enough, you always lose. You just mathematically must. The percentage is a scientific certain-t-y-ty. My system is to bet high, win, and quit before you begin to lose.”