; may Heaven's vengeance
overtake you for it.' Thus spoke the Colonel; and he again strode
towards Angela's chamber.

"The Chevalier sprang towards the door, tore it open, rushed to the bed
in which his wife lay, and drew back the curtains, crying, 'Angela!
Angela!' Bending over her, he grasped her hand; but all at once he
shook and trembled in mortal anguish and cried in a thundering voice,
'Look! look! you have won my wife's corpse.'

"Perfectly horrified, the Colonel approached the bed; no sign of
life!--Angela was dead--dead.

"Then the Colonel doubled his fist and shook it heavenwards, and rushed
out of the room uttering a fearful cry. Nothing more was ever heard of
him."

This was the end of the stranger's tale; and the Baron was so shaken
that before he could say anything the stranger had hastily risen from
the seat and gone away.

A few days later the stranger was found in his room suffering from
apoplexy of the nerves. He never opened his mouth up to the moment of
his death, which ensued after the lapse of a few hours. His papers
proved that, though he called himself Baudasson simply, he was no less
a person than the unhappy Chevalier Menars himself.

The Baron recognised it as a warning from Heaven, that Chevalier Menars
had been led across his path to save him just as he was approaching the
brink of the precipice; he vowed that he would withstand all the
seductions of the gambler's deceptive luck.

Up till now he has faithfully kept his word.

FOOTNOTES TO "GAMBLER'S LUCK":

[Footnote 1: In faro the keeper of the bank plays against all the rest
of the players (who are called _punters_). He has a full pack; they
have but a single complete suit. The punters may stake what they please
upon any card they please, except in so far as rules may have been made
to the contrary by the banker. After the cards have been cut, the
banker proceeds to take off the two top cards one after the other,
placing the first at his right hand, and the second at his left, each
with the face uppermost. Any punter who has staked a card which bears
exactly the same number of "peeps" as the card turned up on the
banker's right hand loses the stake to the latter; but if it bears the
same number of "peeps" as the card on the banker's left, it is the
banker who has to pay the punter a sum equal to the value of his stake.
The twenty-six drawings which a full pack allows the banker to make are
called a _taille_.

This general