They were amply sufficient to live upon for a month; but if he could only double them!
Surely his bad luck could not stick to him all the evening.
He would try again.
"What time is it?"—he looked up at the clock—"only eleven!" Elise, his little wife, has got the baby to sleep by this time and is probably reading, while eagerly expecting his return home. Another hour will make no great difference.
He goes to the table and buys some checks, with which he begins to speculate.
Mr. Smith laughs with the air of Mephisto, and says to himself:
"I knew it. Score one to me again for having some knowledge of character. He is a weak man and easily led. So much the better for me."
Presently a lady, thickly vailed, entered the saloon and looked timidly around her.
Evidently she was searching for some one.
Seldom, indeed, was a lady seen in the saloon, for it is not the custom for the fair sex to gamble in America, whatever they may do in Europe.