of the cards in long columns,
and shuffled and dealt again. Toward the end even this absorption failed
him, and, head bowed upon the table, he visioned the lively all-night
houses of Nome, where the gamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and
the clattering roulette ball never slept. At such times his loneliness
and bankruptcy stunned him till he sat for hours in the same unblinking,
unchanging position. At other times, his long-pent bitterness found
voice in passionate outbursts; for he had rubbed the world the wrong way
and did not like the feel of it.

"Life's a skin-game," he was fond of repeating, and on this one note he
rang the changes. "I never had half a chance," he complained. "I was
faked in my birth and flim-flammed with my mother's milk. The dice were
loaded when she tossed the box, and I was born to prove the loss. But
that was no reason she should blame me for it, and look on me as a cold
deck; but she did--ay, she did. Why didn't she give me a show? Why
didn't the world? Why did I go broke in Seattle? Why did I take the
steerage, and live like a hog to Nome? Why did I go to the El Dorado? I
was heading for Big Pete's and only went for matches. Why didn't I have
matches? Why did I want to smoke? Don't you see? All worked out, every
bit of it, all parts fitting snug. Before I was born, like as not. I'll
put the sack I never hope to get on it, before I was born. That's why!
That's why John Randolph passed the word and his checks in at the same
time. Damn him! It served him well right! Why didn't he keep his
tongue between his teeth and give me a chance? He knew I was next to
broke. Why didn't I hold my hand? Oh, why? Why? Why?"

And Fortune La Pearle would roll upon the floor, vainly interrogating the
scheme of things. At such outbreaks Uri said no word, gave no sign, save
that his grey eyes seemed to turn dull and muddy, as though from lack of
interest. There was nothing in common between these two men, and this
fact Fortune grasped sufficiently to wonder sometimes why Uri had stood
by him.

But the time of waiting came to an end. Even a community's blood lust
cannot stand before its gold lust. The murder of John Randolph had
already passed into the annals of the camp, and there it rested. Had the
murderer appeared, the men of Nome would certainly have stopped
stampeding long enough to see justice done, whereas the whereabouts of
Fortune La Pearle was no longer an insi