"Well, so he was; but no more a thief than many a respectable man who secures his own and goes on risking other people's money. It's the way of the world. However, as I told you, I gave it up long ago. There was a time in my life when I used to live by it."
"How did you manage that?"
"There are certain rules to be observed, that's all. Only you must stick to them. For one thing, you must make up your mind never to lose more than a certain fixed sum any night you play. If you stick to that, you will find your winnings always in excess of your losses."
"How can that be?"
"Oh, I don't pretend to account for it. Gaming has its laws as well as the universe generally. Everything goes by laws, you know-laws that cannot be round out except by experiment; and that, as I say, is one of the laws of gambling."
All this time Mr. Stopper had been reading Mr. Molken's face. Suddenly Tom caught sight of his superior; the warning of Wither rushed back on his mind, and he grew pale as death. Molken perceiving the change, sought for its cause, but saw nothing save a stony gentleman in the opposite box sipping sherry, and picking the ripest pieces out of a Stilton.
"Don't look that way, Molken," said Tom, in an undertone. "That's our Mr. Stopper."
"Well, haven't we as good a right to be here as Mr. Stopper?" returned Molken, in a voice equally inaudible beyond the table, but taking piercing eyeshots at the cause of Tom's discomposure.
The two men very soon had something like each other's measure. They could each understand his neighbor's rascality, while his own seemed to each only a law of nature.
"You generally pay, don't you?" added Molken.