chair.

"Just a friendly hand or two, I suppose," he suggested, when the other
made no move to begin. "Low limit and wide open, eh?"

Garry still toyed with the cards.

"I don't suppose you've ever forgotten the first game in which we
indulged, have you, Joe?" he asked at length. Joe was not comfortable.

"Scarcely," he admitted. "Scarcely."

"Nor the--stakes?" pursued Garry.

"I--I seem to recall 'em, faintly."

Garry's peal of amusement was as rollicking as a boy's.

"So do I," he exclaimed. "And if I remember rightly you stated on that
occasion that cash was no consideration with you. Does that still hold
good?"

It was the first good look Joe had had at the other's face. The change
he found in it seemed to perplex him more than a little.

"I take it that it does." Garry did not wait for his reply. "And
now--what do you say to that same full bottle against a--a ninety-nine
year blanket restriction, with me at the wrong end of the odds?"

Joe slitted his eyes.

"When they tuck a ninety-nine year clause into a franchise they mean
it's forever, don't they?" he wanted to know.

"Forever, to all intents and purposes!" said Garry.

Joe's chest sank and rose in a long, long breath.

"It's no word to trifle with," he cautioned at last. "If you lose
it'll be a considerable drouth."

"Cut!" invited Garry, and they started to play.

That other night Garry's stack of chips had lasted far longer than they
did on this second occasion. A half hour later, when he rose to go to
bed, his ninety-nine year promise of abstinence was piled symmetrically
before Fat Joe. But his good-night was gay. For a time after his
departure Joe eyed Steve, sidewise.

"Hum-m-m," he cleared his throat. "Hum-m-m! And I was expectin' you
to turn up any hour of the last twenty-four with a request that I come
and help bring home the remains. You must be quite a silver-tongued
exhorter, aren't you, Steve?"

Stephen O'Mara was silent over the paper which Joe had handed him
earlier in the evening, and the lack of any offer on his part to go
into details did not trouble his questioner. Fat Joe sat and bobbed
his head over what would never cease to be a miracle in his eyes.

"And he'll stick this time," he vented his wonder aloud. "He's surely
going to stick!" Then he smiled widely. "And I reckon you'll have to
admit that I handled the small part that come my way with ease and
dispatch, when I tell you that he didn't ca