Loring staggered to the door and looked out. From the blackness came a gust of wind and rain that cooled his flushed forehead.
“I think he’s all right. Can’t see anything at all. Must have been wind you heard. Big, big wind outside.”
During his absence from the table, Hankins had dealt. Stephen picked up his cards. At first he could not distinguish them. They seemed to be all a blur of color. Then it slowly dawned upon him that he held four kings and a jack. His head reeled with excitement.
“Any objection to raising limit?” he asked eagerly, with an unconcealed look of triumph upon his face.
“Wa-al, of course, if you want to, we’ll come along, just to make the game interesting,” drawled Jackson; “I guess you have us stung all right. Only one card for you? Gawd, you must have a fat hand!”
Loring kept raising and raising, until he reached the limit of all that he owned in the world. Then, for drunk or sober, he was no man to bet what he did not have, he called. Throwing his cards face upwards upon the table, he reached unsteadily for the huge pile of chips.
“F-Four kings!” he shouted exultantly. “I—think—they are good.”
“‘It seems like as if you was bitten, Mr. Loring,’ said Hankins.” [Page 125]
Jackson looked at Stephen’s half-shut eyes, at the heavy way his elbow rested on the table, and smiled. Then with a broad wink at Hankins, he exclaimed.