Interested as I was in Hepburn’s revelations of soul, I looked up and saw the young man who had been so lucky twice before. He had plainly forgotten that he had ever seen the wheel—so treacherous are some memories—and pulling out of his pocket a dollar bill and a cent—all he had, evidently—he placed the dollar on “25,” which with great ingenuousness he said was his age, and the wheel spun round.
“I’m afraid you’re going to lose it, young man,” said the gamester. “It’s a hundred dollars if it stops at your figure. She comes nearer, she passes, she comes round again—she goes slower—she pas—no, she touches it. I congratulate you, young man. I lose, but you gain and I like to see a man win when he’s young and out for fun.”
“By George,” said the young man, ecstatically happy. “I never played one of the blamed things before. A hundred dollars?”
“Yes, a hundred dollars. Suppose you try it again.”
A dense crowd was now around the wheel and all eyes were fixed on the poor young man, who had so suddenly won a pocket of money—and that for the third time that day—although I was the only one who remembered that fact.
His hand sought his pocket—and then he remembered that a dollar and a cent had been all he had had—there—and he shook his head and said,
“No, sir. I’ve struck ile and I’m go’n’ to quit.”
“By George, I like your strength of character. Who else will take the young man’s chance? Only a dollar a try.”
The dollars rained down. The wheel went round and a score of anxious eyes blazed at the board. But every man lost his dollar and the young man who had been so strangely lucky and so curiously forgetful of his former luck, walked away, followed by Hepburn, who had been in a brown study, and me.
“There’s only one man seems to win in those games of chance,” said I.