ost daring
bank-robbery we ever had here. A hundred and forty-eight thousand
dollars--think of it! How long has it been since he was let out of
Joliet?"

"Eight years. In that time he has grown a beard, and lived by
dice-throwing with men who thought they could detect him if he should
swindle them; but that is impossible. No human being can come winner
out of a game with him. He is evidently not here; let us look farther."

Then the two men clinked glasses and passed out.

The dice-players--the pale one and the starving one--sat gazing at each
other, with a hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars piled up between
them. The winner made no move to take in the money; he merely sat and
stared at Kimberlin, wholly unmoved by the conversation in the
adjoining room. His imperturbability was amazing, his absolute
stillness terrifying.

Kimberlin began to shake with an ague. The cold, steady gaze of the
stranger sent ice into his marrow. Unable to bear longer this
unwavering look, Kimberlin moved to one side, and then he was amazed to
discover that the eyes of the pale man, instead of following him,
remained fixed upon the spot where he had sat, or, rather, upon the
wall behind it. A great dread beset the young man. He feared to make
the slightest sound. Voices of men in the bar-room were audible, and
the sufferer imagined that he heard others whispering and tip-toeing in
the passage outside his booth. He poured out some absinthe, watching
his strange companion all the while, and drank alone and unnoticed. He
took a heavy drink, and it had a peculiar effect upon him: he felt his
heart bounding with alarming force and rapidity, and breathing was
difficult. Still his hunger remained, and that and the absinthe gave
him an idea that the gastric acids were destroying him by digesting his
stomach. He leaned forward and whispered to the stranger, but was given
no attention. One of the man's hands lay upon the table; Kimberlin
placed his upon it, and then drew back in terror--the hand was as cold
as a stone.

The money must not lie there exposed. Kimberlin arranged it into neat
parcels, looking furtively every moment at his immovable companion, and
_in mortal fear that he would stir_! Then he sat back and waited. A
deadly fascination impelled him to move back into his former position,
so as to bring his face directly before the gaze of the stranger. And
so the two sat and stared at each other.

Kimberlin felt his breath coming