y told him that Tracy Sargeant had arrived a
few moments previous, and had been asking for him.

The Saturday of the week before, Condy had made an engagement with
young Sargeant to have supper together that night, and perhaps go to
the theatre afterward. And now at the sight of Sargeant in the "round
window" of the main room, buried in the file of the "Gil Blas," Condy
was pleased to note that neither of them had forgotten the matter.

Sargeant greeted him with extreme cordiality as he came up, and at once
proposed a drink. Sargeant was a sleek, well-groomed, well-looking
fellow of thirty, just beginning to show the effects of a certain
amount of dissipation in the little puffs under the eyes and the faint
blueness of the temples. The sudden death of his father for which
event Sargeant was still mourning, had left him in such position that
his monthly income was about five times as large as Condy's salary.
The two had supper together, and Sargeant proposed the theatre.

"No, no; I've got to work to-night," asserted Condy.

After dinner, while they were smoking their cigars in a window of the
main room, one of the hall-boys came up and touched Condy on the arm.

"Mr. Eckert, and Mr. Hendricks, and Mr. George Hands, and several other
of those gentlemen are up in the card-room, and are asking for you and
Mr. Sargeant."

"Why, I didn't know the boys were here! They've got a game going,
Condy. Let's go up and get in. Shall we?"

Condy remembered that he had no money. "I'm flat broke, Tracy," he
announced, for he knew Sargeant well enough to make the confession
without wincing. "No, I'll not get in; but I'll go up and watch you a
few minutes."

They ascended to the card-room, where the air was heavy and acrid with
cigar smoke, and where the silence was broken only by the click of
poker-chips. At the end of twenty minutes Condy was playing, having
borrowed enough money of Sargeant to start him in the game.

Unusually talkative and restless, he had suddenly hardened and
stiffened to a repressed, tense calm; speechless, almost rigid in his
chair. Excitable under even ordinary circumstances, his every faculty
was now keyed to its highest pitch. The nervous strain upon him was
like the stretching and tightening of harp-strings, too taut to quiver.
The color left his face, and the moisture fled his lips. His projected
article, his promise to Blix, all the jollity of the afternoon, all
thought of time or place,