t of victims. Who are the winners?"

"Messenger and Jarvis have been carrying all before them; there is a
report they have just sent off two club waiters, with loads of rupees,
to their quarters. Scarsdale has been pretty well holding his own, but
the rest of us are nowhere."

A year's want of practice, however, told, and the Doctor was added to
the list of victims: he had no difficulty in getting someone else to
take his cue after playing for half an hour.

"It shows that practice is required for everything," he said; "before
I went away I could have given each of those men a life, now they could
give me two; I must devote half an hour a day to it till I get it back
again."

"And you shall give me a lesson, Doctor," Captain Doolan, who had also
retired, said.

"It would be time thrown away by both of us, Doolan. You would never
make a pool player if you were to practice all your life. It is not the
eye that is wrong, but the temperament. You can make a very good shot
now and then, but you are too harum scarum and slap dash altogether.
The art of playing pool is the art of placing yourself; while, when you
strike, you have not the faintest idea where your ball is going to,
and you are just as likely to run in yourself as you are to pot your
adversary. I should abjure it if I were you, Doolan; it is too expensive
a luxury for you to indulge in."

"You are right there, Doctor; only what is a man to do when fellows say,
'We want you to make up a pool, Doolan'?"

"I should say the reply would be quite simple. I should answer, 'I am
ready enough to play if any of you are ready to pay my losses and take
my winnings; I am tired of being as good as an annuity to you all,'
for that is what you have been for the last ten years. Why, it would be
cheaper for you to send home to England for skittles, and get a ground
up here."

"But I don't play so very badly, Doctor."

"If you play badly enough always to lose, it doesn't matter as to the
precise degree of badness," the Doctor retorted. "It is not surprising.
When you came out here, fourteen or fifteen years ago, boys did not
take to playing billiards, but they do now. Look at that little villain,
Richards. He has just cleared the table, and done it with all the
coolness of a professional marker. The young scoundrel ought to have
been in bed two hours ago, for I hear that tat of his is really a good
one. Not that it will make any difference to him. That sort of boy would