"As your lordship desires, though it is a mistake."
"How so?"
"Because I am in luck's way lately," returned Mr. Gladsden, significantly. "You always lose pitted against me."
"Do you really think that run will last?"
"I am willing to wager on it," was the reply, in the determined tone of an Englishman to whom, indeed, a bet is the ultima ratio.
"¡Caray!" exclaimed the arch-bandit, piqued, "Your remark decides me, all goes on the dos de espadas, two of spades. Is it a go?"
The Spanish-Americans are fine players, they lose or gain ever so large sums without wincing. As the spectators uttered a cry of admiration for him who was more or less their lion, Gladsden resolved to prove that he could gamble as well as the best of them.
"Señor Don Aníbal, you'll excuse the rest," he said, impudently, like a man who pretty well knew that he had not a friend in the crowd, as he presented his adversary, in all senses of the word, with the cards; "do you mind shuffling them yourself?"
"What for, Señor?" holding his hands away.
"Oh, it is not merely because I believe you good at shuffling, but because things are getting serious, and it is important after all that has taken place between us that you should be convinced that I play fair, and that nothing but my better fortune thwarts you."