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It was broad day-light when I awoke, and after ordering the finest fruit and some ices for the evening I left the casino. In order to shorten a day which my impatient desires would have caused me to find very long, I went to the faro-table, and I saw with pleasure that I was as great a favourite with fortune as with love.

I found afterwards that he done it for a living; didn't work none, just strayed around as co-respondent for an English newspaper syndicate, taking pictures and writing story things. I didn't pay much attention to him hiding under his black cloth, 'cause the faro-table was full of bets, and it's hard to follow the play. Well, bye-and-bye Wilmer shifted another stack belonging to the Easterner.

There was the crowd hiding in the corners, and behind the faro-table stood the kid, one hand among the scattered chips and cards, the other dominating the layout with 'Curley's' 'six. It couldn't have looked more natural if we'd posed for it. It was a bully likeness, I thought, too, till I seen myself glaring over the bar.

Yes there sat the two sharpers, side by side, behind the faro-table not as mere bettors, but acting respectively as banker and croupier of the game! Chorley held the dealing-box in his fingers, while Hatcher sat upon his right, with cheques, dollars, and bank-notes piled upon the table in front of him! A glance around the ring of faces showed us the pork-merchant as well.

While he did so comprehension dawning on him his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott's hand rested heavily on him. "What's the row?" demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man. Logan pointed at de Spain. "That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight."

The girl dealt swiftly, surely; she handled the paraphernalia of the faro-table with the careless familiarity of long practice; but stranger still, she maintained a poise, a certain reserve and feminine dignity which were totally incongruous. When, during a pause, she absent-mindedly shuffled a stack of chips, the Mocha Kid permitted his feelings to get the better of him.

It was broad day-light when I awoke, and after ordering the finest fruit and some ices for the evening I left the casino. In order to shorten a day which my impatient desires would have caused me to find very long, I went to the faro-table, and I saw with pleasure that I was as great a favourite with fortune as with love.

There were hats in abundance, from the spotless silk to the most miserable head coverings, some of which looked as if they had been picked up from the rubbish-heap. There were pedlars' trays fitted with all and every sort of ware, a faro-table, a placard setting forth the fact that the renowned Professor Somebody or Other was a most remarkable phrenologist and worthy of a visit.

After that, I dressed, masked myself, and went to the opera, where I sat down to a faro-table and lost all my money. Fortune was determined to shew me that it does not always agree with love. My heart was heavy, I felt miserable; I went to bed.

Other eatables and drinkables appeared as by magic, the faro-table was soon spread with the fruits of a half-dozen hasty and hysterical forays. Rouletta stared at the apprehensive faces about her, and what she read therein caused her lips to quiver and her voice to break when she tried to express her thanks. "Gosh! Don't cry!" begged the Mocha Kid.