success our part had been, owing to
Sandy acting the fool with Cousin Egbert's money, which the latter ain't
wise to yet. When I next notice the game a halt has been called by Cora
Wales. It seems the hunch has quit working. Neither of 'em has won a bet
for twenty minutes and Cora is calling the game crooked.

"It looks very, very queer," says she, "that our numbers should so
suddenly stop winning; very queer and suspicious indeed!" And she glared
at Cousin Egbert with rage and distrust splitting fifty-fifty in her
fevered eyes.

Cousin Egbert replied quickly, but he kind of sputtered and so couldn't
have been arrested for it.

"Oh, I've no doubt you can explain it very glibly," says Cora; "but it
seems very queer indeed to Leonard and I, especially coming at this
peculiar time, when our little home is almost within my grasp."

Cousin Egbert just walked off, though opening and shutting his hands in
a nervous way, like, in fancy free, he had her out on her own lot in
Price's Addition and was there abusing her fatally.

"Very well!" says Cora with great majesty. "He may evade giving me a
satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary change, but I shall
certainly not remain in this place and permit myself to be fleeced.
Here, darling!"

And she stuffs some loose silver into darling's last pocket that will
hold any more. He was already wadded with bills and sagging with coin,
till it didn't look like the same suit of clothes. Then she stood there
with a cynical smile and watched Sandy still playing his hunch, ten
dollars to a number, and never winning a bet.

"You poor dupe!" says she when Sandy himself finally got tired and quit.
"It's especially awkward," she adds, "because while we have saved enough
to start our little nook, it will have to be far less pretentious than I
was planning to make it while the game seemed to be played honestly."

Cousin Egbert gets this and says, as polite as a stinging lizard, that
he stands ready to give her a chance at any game she can think of, from
mumblety-peg up. He says if she'll turn him and Leonard loose in a
cellar that he'll give her fifty dollars for every one she's winner if
he don't have Len screaming for help inside of one minute--or make it
fifteen seconds. Len, who's about the size of a freight car, smiles kind
of sickish at this, and says he hopes there's no hard feelings among old
friends and lodge brothers; and Egbert says, Oh, no! It would just be in
the nature