me.

"And I am supremely ignorant," said I.

"Of what?" inquired Rogers, turning his face again to Graeme, as if he
would take him into his mouth.

But just as he expected an answer, a slight rap sounded from the door.
Rogers himself opened it, and found that the call was for him. Graeme
and I were left again together, but not to resume the former silence.

"I did not ask you," said he, "what you thought of the figure in the
wood, for I expected nothing but a sceptical sneer. You have heard
Rogers. He is a shrewd fellow, belonging to a profession not remarkable
for credulity."

"Answer me this," said I: "Did no one know the duplicate card you used
in the cheat?"

"You were present and Ruggieri, no others; did you know it?"

"No."

"Then do you know that Ruggieri is dead in Italy? and even if he had
more penetration than you, the secret died with him. But, I tell you, he
could not have known. Nothing transpired at the play to show that a
duplicate card was used at all, far less to show that it was a
particular card."

"You may stagger me," said I, "but never can convince me that you are
not having a nice game played off upon you, something similar to your
own; only in place of duplicates, I fear there are triplicates. Why
might not Gourlay have been aware of the fact you think only known to
yourself?"

"And yet have shot himself as a ruined gambler?"

"Certainly it is more probable," said I, somewhat caught, "that he would
have insisted upon your repaying him, under the threat of exposure. Yet
one does not know what a man may do or not do, even if we knew the
circumstances. Two doves will not pick up for their nests a straw each
of the same shape. But I believe it is now settled, that no case of
mystery has ever happened, or can be supposed by the most ingenious
imagination, where the chances are more for supernatural agency than for
human ingenuity or chance. The latter I put away out of your case,
though the marvels of coincidence are stranger than fiction. Every one
of us has a little record within his heart of such experiences. I have
been startled by a coincidence into a five minutes' belief in
supernatural agency. One opens a book of six hundred pages, and catches,
on the instant, the passage for which he looked the whole day before. An
actor dies in ranting 'there is another and a better world.' A soldier
is saved from the punishment of death for sleeping on his post, by the
fact of having been able