been
so confoundedly bad of late."

"Yes; and when the luck's against you, you go betting on no hands at
all--with Miles waiting for you!" his companion exclaimed. "All right;
every man must play the game his own way. You don't seem to have found
it profitable so far."

"Profitable!" Lionel said, with a dark look in his eyes. "I can tell you
I am in a tight corner, and I reckoned on to-night to settle it one way
or the other--not with you fellows, I can't get anything worth while out
of you, but with Miles. And now he's gone away home with--"

He stopped in time; ladies' names are not mentioned in clubs--at least,
not in such clubs as the Garden.

"The odd thing is," continued Johnny, as he lit a cigarette, and
definitely refused to have any more of the wine, "the extremely odd
thing is that he doesn't seem to care to win from the rest of us. He
lets us share our modest little pots as if they weren't worth looking
at. It's you he goes for, invariably."

"And he's gone for me to some purpose," Lionel said, morosely. "I'm just
about broke--broke five or six times over, if it comes to that--and by
that pennyworth of yellow ribbon!"

"You needn't call him names," said Johnny, as he lay back in his chair.
"Upon my soul I think Miles is somebody in disguise--a priest--an
Inquisitor--somebody with a mission--to punish the sin of gambling. What
does he care about the game? Nothing--I'll swear it! He's only watching
for you. He's an avenger. He has been sent by some superior power--"

"Then it must have been by the devil," said Lionel, with a sombre
expression, "for he has got the devil's own luck at his back. Wait till
I get four of a kind when he is betting on a full hand--and then you'll
see his corpse laid out!" This was all he could say just then; for here
was the young man himself, who must have come back from the Edgeware
Road in a remarkably swift hansom.

Almost directly there was an adjournment to the card-room; and the
players took their places.

"I propose we have in the joker,"[2] Lionel called aloud, as the cards
were dealt for deal.

[Footnote 2: The joker is a fifty-third card, of any kind of
device, which is added to the pack; the player to whom it is dealt
can make it any card he chooses. For example, if the other four
cards he holds are two queens and two sevens, he can make the joker
card a third queen, and thus secure for himself a full hand.]

"I don't see the fun