stingly as he could, but he knew that his laugh was
forced, and that the voice in which he spoke was unlike his voice of
every day, and he wished, with the whole of his quaking heart, that he
had left the theme alone.

'Well, no,' said Steinberg, 'I suppose you wouldn't.' He sipped his
liquor through a straw, and blew half a dozen rings of smoke from his
lips with practised dexterity, and kept a glittering German-Jewish eye
on Barter. Perhaps he meant something by the glance, perhaps he meant
nothing. He was a rather Machiavelian and sinister-looking personage,
was Mr. Steinberg, and there was something even in the calm expression
of those perfectly-formed rings of smoke and in the very way in which,
he sipped his liquor, and most of all in the observant glitter of his
eye, which spoke of a penetration and shrewdness very far out of the
common. More and more young Barter wished that he had not broached this
theme with Steinberg.

He could not help it for his soul. He could feel that his colour was
coming and going with a dreadful fluttering alternation. He quailed
before the Israelitish eye so shrewdly cocked at him, and when in a very
spasm of despair he tried to meet it, he was so abjectly quelled by it
that he felt his face a proclamation of his secret.

Steinberg went on sipping and smoking, and said nothing; but when the
young scoundrel, his companion, had somewhat recovered himself and dared
again to look at him, there was the same shrewd and wary glint in his
eyes.

Young Barter had been unhappy enough before this, but after it the money
became a burden hateful and horrible. He met Steinberg often, and
forced himself to be noisy in his company. In his dread of seeming
low-spirited, or ill at ease, he said things about his dead father which
he would have left unsaid, had he consulted the little good that was
left in him; and Steinberg seemed to watch him very closely.

Young Barter put off his creditor with promises. He would have lots of
money by and by. That seemed credible enough in the position of affairs,
and Steinberg waited. In a while, however, he became exigent, and
declined any longer to be satisfied with promises. One night the unhappy
rascal, playing all the more because of his troubles, all the more
wildly, and certainly all the worse, fell back upon his LO.U.'s.
Steinberg followed him from the club. It was late, and the streets were
very quiet.

'This won't do, you know, Barter,' said Steinber