him and he had been the great sorrow of her life. But I knew that
this man Sparrow MacCoy had a great influence over Edward and my chance
of keeping the lad straight lay in breaking the connection between
them. I had a friend in the New York detective force, and through him
I kept a watch upon MacCoy. When, within a fortnight of my brother's
sailing, I heard that MacCoy had taken a berth in the Etruria, I was as
certain as if he had told me that he was going over to England for the
purpose of coaxing Edward back again into the ways that he had left.
In an instant I had resolved to go also, and to pit my influence
against MacCoy's. I knew it was a losing fight, but I thought, and my
mother thought, that it was my duty. We passed the last night together
in prayer for my success, and she gave me her own Testament that my
father had given her on the day of their marriage in the Old Country,
so that I might always wear it next my heart.

"I was a fellow-traveller, on the steamship, with Sparrow MacCoy, and
at least I had the satisfaction of spoiling his little game for the
voyage. The very first night I went into the smoking-room, and found
him at the head of a card-table, with a half a dozen young fellows who
were carrying their full purses and their empty skulls over to Europe.
He was settling down for his harvest, and a rich one it would have
been. But I soon changed all that.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'are you aware whom you are playing with?'

"'What's that to you? You mind your own business!' said he, with an
oath.

"'Who is it, anyway?' asked one of the dudes.

"'He's Sparrow MacCoy, the most notorious card-sharper in the States.'

"Up he jumped with a bottle in his hand, but he remembered that he was
under the flag of the effete Old Country, where law and order run, and
Tammany has no pull. Gaol and the gallows wait for violence and
murder, and there's no slipping out by the back door on board an ocean
liner.

"'Prove your words, you----!' said he.

"'I will!' said I. 'If you will turn up your right shirt-sleeve to the
shoulder, I will either prove my words or I will eat them.'

"He turned white and said not a word. You see, I knew something of his
ways, and I was aware of that part of the mechanism which he and all
such sharpers use consists of an elastic down the arm with a clip just
above the wrist. It is by means of this clip that they withdraw from
their hands the cards which they do not want,