But Hodge knew in his heart that it was not the smoking of one or a dozen cigarettes that was dangerous to Merriwell; it was the breaking of his resolutions—it was the feeling of abandon and recklessness that had seemed to seize upon him.
Not much time was lost in beginning the game, but now Bart insisted on a proper limit.
"What do you say, Merriwell?" asked George Harris. "What kind of a limit suits you?"
"Anything from five cents to the sky," was the laughing reply. "Fix it to suit yourselves."
Once more Gage and Snell exchanged glances.
Bart stuck for a moderate limit, but he finally agreed to make it a dollar, the ante being five cents.
"Vell, uf I had pad luck, I don'd last long at dot," said Hans. "I don'd haf more as four tollars und sefen cends."
"Merriwell won at the start the last time he was here, and he kept the luck straight through to the finish," observed Harvey Dare. "It isn't often such a thing occurs."
A few minutes later, as Harris beat Frank, the latter said:
"This game starts differently from the other, fellows. I have lost at the beginning, and to keep up the precedent I have established, I must lose all through it."