'I'm sorry you've had such bad luck lately,' he said quietly. 'But you mustn't let the memory of the small sum you owe me trouble you. I'm in no hurry for it. Fortune's bound to smile on you again before very long, and then you can settle with me at your convenience.'
'To tell the honest truth,' I blurted out, feeling myself growing hot all over, 'I can't pay. I ought not to have played at all.'
'Oh, don't say that,' he answered. 'Remember we only do it for amusement. If you let your losses worry you I shall be more than miserable. No! come up next Monday evening, and let us see what will happen then.'
Monday night came and I played and won!
I paid Pete, and then, because I was a coward and afraid to stop lest they should laugh at me, began again. Once more I won, then Fortune again began to frown upon me, and I lost. We played every evening after that with varying success. At last the crash came. One evening, after liquidating my liabilities to the other men, I rose from the table owing Whispering Pete a hundred pounds.
Bidding him good-night, I went down the hill in a sort of stupor. How I was to pay him I could not think. I had not a halfpenny in the world, and nothing that I could possibly sell to raise the money. That night, as may be imagined, I did not sleep a wink.
Next morning I asked my father to advance me the amount in question. He inquired my reason, and as I declined to give it, he refused to consider my request.
After that, for more than a week, I kept away from the house on the hill, being too much ashamed to go near it. My life, from being a fairly happy one, now became a burden to me. I carried my miserable secret locked up in my breast by day, and dreamed of it by night.
Then the climax came. One evening a note from Whispering Pete was brought to me by one of his black boys. I took it into the house and read it with my coward heart in my mouth. It ran as follows:—