ite to Pert under such circumstances? At first it had
not been so hard; but now he had put it off from day to day, dreading
to tell her of his non-success, always hoping that surely to-morrow he
must have good news, until fully a week elapsed in which he had not
written. How troublesome a thing is pride--to the poor.

In the course of his wanderings he came across numbers of the old
companions of his pool-room days. Few of them had changed, but for the
worse. Most of them were penniless, hungry and threadbare, but still
the victims of the hopeless vice, and whenever fortune threw in their
way a dollar, it went into the insatiable maw of the race-tracks.
Checkers noted and was warned; and to their earnest solicitations to
"play their good things" he pointed them to their own condition--a
pertinent and unanswerable argument.

But though never so careful the time came apace when his little hoard
was all but exhausted. His treasured keepsake he still vowed nothing
should make him part with. "If I 've got to starve," he grimly
resolved, "it might as well be a week or two earlier as later--but I
'll keep Pert's gold piece."

That same day he received from Pert a letter full of encouragement, but
pleading with him, as he loved her, to write. "All in the world that I
have to look forward to now, Checkers, dear," she said, "is your
letters; and you can 't imagine how disappointed I am, and how I worry
for fear you are sick, or something, as the days go by, and no word
comes from you."

Standing by the window in his dismal boarding-house room Checkers read
the letter over and over. Meditatively he examined his
pockets--nothing! nothing but the gold piece. Something must be done.
There were a number of garments hanging on the wall, among them an
overcoat. "I can do without that," he said, with a shiver.

Half an hour later, richer by a few pieces of silver, he stood in a
telegraph-office, penning a message to Pert. "Letter received," he
wrote. "Am well, but no luck. Will write to-day. Checkers."

Beside him as he wrote, stood a man whom he recognized--one Brown, an
owner of a racing-stable. With the tail of his eye Checkers read what
he was writing. It was a telegram to some one in St. Louis, and ran:
"Stand a tap on the mare to-day. She can't lose." Checkers' heart was
in his mouth. Instantly his resolution was taken. Out into the street
he followed Brown. With the furtive care of a Hackshaw he shadowed