“There’s no such word as fail! Shall I tell you what I did once?”
“Yes,” answered Mullins, in some curiosity.
“I was in Nashville—dead broke! I was younger then, and losses affected me more. I was even half inclined—you will laugh, I know—to blow my brains out or to throw myself into the river, when a stranger offered to lend me ten dollars to try my luck again. Well, I thought as you did, that it was of little use. I would lose it, and so make matters worse.
“But desperation led me to accept. It was one chance, not a very good one, but still a chance. From motives of prudence I only risked five dollars at first. I lost. Savagely I threw down the remaining five and won twenty-five. Then I got excited, and kept on for an hour. At the end of that time, how do you think I stood?”
“How?” asked Mullins, eagerly.
“I had won eight hundred and sixty-five dollars,” answered Dick Ralston, coolly. “I paid back the ten dollars, and went out of the gambling house a rich man, comparatively speaking.”
Now, all this story was a clever fiction, but David Mullins did not know this. He accepted it as plain matter of fact, and his heart beat quickly as he fancied himself winning as large a sum.
“But such cases must be rare,” he ventured.
“Not at all. I could tell you more wonderful stories about friends of mine, though it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. Now, will you take the fifty dollars I offered you?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to play again to-night. I feel nervous.”