"Well?"
"You have lost."
"Good. Tío Lucas, take a hundred ounces from my purse."
"I have them, your excellency," the banker replied. "Would you please to play again?"
"Certainly, but not for such trifles. I should like to feel interested in the game."
"I will cover any stake your excellency may like to name," the banker said, whose practised eye had discovered in the stranger's purse, amid a decent number of ounces, some forty diamonds of the purest water.
"H'm! Are you really ready to cover any stake I name?"
"Yes."
The stranger looked at him sharply.
"Even if I played for a thousand gold ounces?"