is voice caused me to hesitate, and
remain by him a little longer.

"Well," I said, "you have not yet told me what you wished to say."

"Indeed, I have said already. I have told you not to play--that you
would lose if you did. I repeat that counsel."

"True, I have lost a little, but it does not follow that fortune will be
always on one side. It is rather my partner's fault, who seems a bad
player."

"Your partner, if I mistake not, is one of the best players on the
river. I think I have seen that gentleman before."

"Ha! you know him them?"

"Something of him--not much, but that much I know. Do _you_ know him?"

"Never saw him before to-night."

"Nor any of the others?"

"They are all equally strangers to me."

"You are not aware, then, that you are playing with _sportsmen_?"

"No, but I am very glad to hear it. I am something of a sportsman
myself--as fond of dogs, horses, and guns, as any of the three, I
warrant."

"Ha! Monsieur, you misapprehend. A sportsman in your country, and a
sportsman in a Mississippi steamboat, are two very distinct things.
Foxes, hares, and partridges, are the game of your sportsman.
Greenhorns and their purses are the game of gentry like these."

"The men with whom I am playing, then, are--"

"Professional gamblers--steamboat sharpers."

"Are you sure of this, Monsieur?"

"Quite sure of it. Oh! I often travel up and down to New Orleans. I
have seen them all before."

"But one of them has the look of a farmer or a merchant, as I thought--a
pork-merchant from Cincinnati--his talk ran that way."

"Farmer--merchant, ha! ha! ha! a farmer without acres--a merchant
without trade! Monsieur, that simply-dressed old fellow is said to be
the `smartest'--that is the Yankee word--the smartest sportsman in the
Mississippi valley, and such are not scarce, I trow."

"After all, they are strangers to each other, and one of them is my
partner--I do not see how they can--"

"Strangers to each other!" interrupted my new friend. "Since when have
they become acquainted? I myself have seen the three in company, and at
the same business, almost every time I have journeyed on the river.
True, they talk to each other as if they had accidentally met. That is
part of their arrangement for cheating such as you."

"So you believe they have actually been cheating me?"

"Since the stakes have been raised to ten dollars they have."

"But how?"

"Oh, it is very simple. Sometime