"Let me see something for my money. Here's a stake of two dollars, and I crow!" But he spoke now in a very faint treble indeed, and looked penitently at the cards.
Again the cards were shuffled, cut, and dealt, and the "plucked pigeon" staked his last dollar upon them.
"The last button on Gabe's coat, and I cr—cr—; no, I'll be hamstrung if I do!"
He lost this too, and, with as deep a curse as I ever heard, he rose from the green board.
The apartment was very spacious, and on the ground floor. There was only this one gaming table in it, and not many lookers-on besides myself. Thinking the gaming was over, I turned to go out, but found the door locked, and the key gone. There was evidently something in the wind. At all events, I reflected, in ease of need, the windows are not very far to the ground. I returned, and saw the winners dividing the spoil, and the poor shorn "greenhorn," leaning over the back of their chairs, staring intently at the money.
The notes were deliberately spread out one after another. Those which the loser had staked were new, fresh from the press, he said, and they were sorted into a heap distinct from the rest. They were two-dollar, three-dollar, and five-dollar notes, from the Indiana Bank, and the Bank of Columbus, in Ohio.
"I say, Ned, I don't think these notes are good," said one of the winners, and examined them.
"I wish they were'nt, and I'd crow," cried out the loser, very chop-fallen, at his elbow.
This simple speech lulled the suspicions of the counter, and he resumed his counting. At last, as he took up the last note, and eying it keenly, he exclaimed, in a most emphatic manner, "I'll be hanged if they are genuine! They are forged!"
"No, they ain't!" replied the loser, quite as emphatically.