supplication for the other man
to desist, but Faust was not to be stopped.

"I made a mistake, an' I'm sorry; an' if you will tell me whether
Diablo's good business for the Brooklyn, I'll back him now at the
shorter price. There's no use of us bein' bad friends."

"I think Diablo's a fairly good bet," said Crane, quietly, entirely
ignoring the question of friendship.

"It won't be poachin' if I have a bet, then?" asked the Cherub, more
solicitous than he had appeared at an earlier stage of the game.

"Poachers don't worry me," remarked Diablo's owner. "I'm my own game
keeper, and they usually get the worst of it. But you go ahead and have
your bet."

"Thank you, there won't be no more bad breaks made by me; but I didn't
mean to give you none the worst of it. Good day, sir," and he was gone.

"Faust has had his lesson," thought Crane, as he took from a drawer the
stable-boy's ill-favored note.

"I wonder who sent me this scrawl? It gave me a pointer, though. I
suppose the writer will turn up for his reward; but the devil of it is
he'll sell information of this sort to anyone who'll buy. Must weed him
out when I've discovered the imp. At any rate Faust will go straight,
now he's been scorched. I'll just re-enter that bet to the Little Woman
while I think of it. 'Three thousand seven hundred and fifty to fifty,
Diablo for the Brooklyn, laid to Miss Allis Porter.'" Then he dated
it. "She loses by this transaction, but that won't matter; it will be
a pretty good win if it comes off. She may even refuse this, though she
shouldn't, for it's a part of the bargain that I was to have a bet on
for her, a small bet, of course. Yes, yes; I remember, a small bet.
But this is a small bet. There was nothing said about the size of the
winnings. She was probably thinking of gloves. Jingo, she has a lovely
hand, I've noticed it; long slim fingers, even the palm is long; sinewy
I'll warrant; nothing pudgy about that hand. Hey, Crane, you're silly!"
he cried, half audibly, taking himself to task; "doing business in big
moneys--a cool seventy-five thousand, if it materializes, perhaps even
more--and then slipping off into a mooney dream, vaporing about a girl's
slim hand. I suppose that's the love symptom. But at forty! it's hardly
my normal condition, I fancy."

The slim hand beckoned him off into a disjointed reverie. Was he the
better for it? What would the end be? Before the new emotion he could
look back upon his past struggle