e borry.' Have you ever been flat broke, Mr. Preston, with not
a nickel in your jeans; no one to stake you; no place to go, and
nothing to keep you from starving to death? You haven't, eh? Well,
then you do n't begin to know what trouble is. You feel as though
every one had you 'sized,' or as though you were going to be arrested.
You can't help thinking about the stuff you blew so reckless when you
were flush--the night you got out and spent a hundred, and say, if you
only had it now! You take a paralyzed oath on your mother that if you
ever get right again you'll 'salt your stuff' and be a 'tight-wad'--and
then you remember you 're broke again. I 've been up against some dead
tough luck, and I 've had some fancy crimps put in me, but somehow I
've never felt so 'on my uppers' as I did at the Springs that night.

"Say, if this hard-luck story of mine gets tiresome to you, ring me
off. I did n't think I 'd be so long in getting to where my troubles
began."

I assured him that I felt the tale immensely interesting, as indeed I
did, not only in its mere detail, but taken in connection with the
youth who sat there, telling me his story in his naive way, as
unconcerned as though he had the Bank of England to draw upon. With
not a penny in his pocket, or for aught I knew a place to sleep, it
certainly seemed that, with the sparrows, he leaned most heavily on
Providence.

"Let 's have the rest of it, Checkers," I said; "I 'm anxious to hear
how you raised the wind."

He sipped his coffee and puffed his cigarette with a retrospective air,
inhaling the smoke at every draught, or blowing it forth in little
rings which he watched as they circled off into space.

I waited in silence.

"Well," he continued, "it was nothing but 'gallop on after the torch.'
About 10 o'clock I blew into a joint that I had n't been to--a gambling
house. There was a gang around the faro-bank, and I shoved in to see
what was going on. I hope I may drop if Kendall was n't sitting there,
howling, paralyzed full. He had a lot of chips in front of him,
playin' 'em like a drunken sailor. He had down bets all over the
board, and, honest, it gave me heart disease to see him play. He puts
a stack on the ace to win. In a minute or two another player coppers
it, and takes it down. I jumps in and grabs him by the arm. 'Hold
on,' I hollered, 'Arthur, here's a piker that's touchin' you for your
chips.'

"Say, there was trouble right away. The