"Well, that is about the sum of my knowledge. Suppose we while away a half-an-hour at one of these vacant tables."
Warren consented, and they sat down. After playing a game or two, Sharpe proposed having a bottle of wine, and, said he, laughingly, "Whoever loses the next game, shall pay for it."
"Agreed," said Warren; and the wine was brought, and he won the game.
"Well, that is your good luck; but I'll bet you the price of another bottle you can't do it again."
Warren won again.
They tried a third, and that Sharpe won; a fourth, and Warren rose the winner.
The next evening found them, somehow, without much talk about it, at the same place. They played with varied success; but when they left, Warren had lost ten dollars.
He wanted to win it back, and himself proposed the visit for the third night. He became excited by the game, and lost seventy dollars.
Still his eyes were not open; he did not dream that he was in the hands of a professed gambler, and, hoping to get back what he had lost, and what he felt he really could not spare from his small amount of funds, he went again.
"There!" said he, after they had been about an hour at the table, "there is my last fifty-dollar bill; change that, and I'll try once more."