him
in and out of hotels and saloons, until about noon they brought up at a
restaurant, where Checkers modestly seated himself at a table behind
Brown and ordered a light repast. But Brown was hungry, and Checkers
had ample time to think the thing over. "I 'm in luck at last," he
soliloquized. "Stand a tap on the mare! His friend will play it in
the foreign-book at East St. Louis and he 'll play it at the track. It
must be a 'hot one'--I wonder what the odds will be. Well, I 'll keep
this can 't-shake-me glide on my feet till I see what he plays, and
then 'get down' on it myself. I 'll put up the gold-piece, and stand
to either lose it or make a stake for myself. Somehow I 'd feel better
to have it go in one last effort to make a killin' than to spend it a
quarter at a time on sandwiches and cigarettes. To-night I 'll either
be able to write to Pert that my luck has turned, or I 'll know the
worst, and that 's some comfort. Ah, Brown 's paying his bill at last."

The summer meeting at Washington Park, with large purses and high-class
horses, was over and gone. But there were other tracks where racing
was carried on all the fall and most of the winter; gambling-hells,
pure and simple, or rather, purely and simply gambling-hells, which the
Legislature has since effectively closed.

In the betting-ring of one of these, that afternoon, Checkers threaded
his way through the crowd after Brown. The programme showed that Brown
had an entry in the last race--Remorse, an aged selling-plater.
Checkers remembered the horse as one that had shown considerable speed
as a three-year-old. He glanced at the programme again: Remorse, by
Gambler, dam Sweetheart. Was it an omen? Remorse would certainly
follow if he gambled away the keepsake which his sweetheart had given
him. But wouldn't an equally poignant regret possess him if after this
providential tip he failed to play the horse and she won? He felt that
it would.

The fourth race was on, and the last was approaching. Brown stood at
the edge of the ring, his hands in his pockets, smoking idly. The
official results of the fourth were announced, and the bookmakers
tacked up the entries for the last. Still, Brown seemed nonchalant.

Checkers anxiously watched the posting of the odds. "Remorse, four to
one," he exclaimed under his breath. Brown also glanced at the
blackboards--and lighted a fresh cigar. Every minute some one would
buttonhole him, and ask, "How