will bring that amount, but I'll take
the risk. Throw in a blanket bill of sale, and we'll turn up our
cards. If you won't do that, the pile is mine as it stands."

Beaucaire again wet his lips, staring at the uncovered cards in his
hands. He could not lose; with what he held no combination was
possible which could beat him. Yet, in spite of this knowledge, the
cold, sneering confidence of Kirby, brought with it a strange fear.
The man was a professional gambler. What gave him such recklessness?
Why should he be so eager to risk such a sum on an inferior hand?
McAfee, sitting next him, leaned over, managed to gain swift glimpse at
what he held, and eagerly whispered to him a word of encouragement.
The Judge straightened up in his chair, grasped a filled glass some one
had placed at his elbow, and gulped down the contents. The whispered
words, coupled with the fiery liquor, gave him fresh courage.

"By God, Kirby! I'll do it!" he blurted out. "You can't bluff me on
the hand I've got. Give me a sheet of paper, somebody--yes, that will
do."

He scrawled a half-dozen lines, fairly digging the pen into the sheet
in his fierce eagerness, and then signed the document, flinging the
paper across toward Kirby.

"There, you blood-sucker," he cried insolently. "Is that all right?
Will that do?"

The imperturbable gambler read it over slowly, carefully deciphering
each word, his thin lips tightly compressed.

"You might add the words, 'This includes every chattel slave legally
belonging to me,'" he said grimly.

"That is practically what I did say."

"Then you can certainly have no objection to putting it in the exact
words I choose," calmly. "I intend to have what is coming to me if I
win, and I know the law."

Beaucaire angrily wrote in the required extra line.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Let McAfee there sign it as a witness, and then toss it over into the
pile." He smiled, showing a line of white teeth beneath his moustache.
"Nice little pot, gentlemen--the Judge must hold some cards to take a
chance like that," the words uttered with a sneer. "Fours, at least,
or maybe he has had the luck to pick a straight flush."

Beaucaire's face reddened, and his eyes grew hard.

"That's my business," he said tersely. "Sign it, McAfee, and I'll call
this crowing cockerel. You young fool, I played poker before you were
born. There now, Kirby, I've covered your bet."

"Perhaps you would prefer to raise it?"

"