said Pembroke.

"Your little slipper against fifty pounds?" asked John Law.

"Why--yes--," hesitated Pembroke, for the moment feeling a doubt of the
luck that had favored him so long that evening. "I'd rather make it
sovereigns, but since you name the slipper, I even make it so, for I
know there is but one chance in hundreds that you win."

The players leaned over the table as the deal went on. Once, twice,
thrice, the cards went round. A sigh, a groan, a long breath broke from
those who looked at the deal. Neither groan nor sigh came from John Law.
He gazed indifferently at the heap of coin and paper that lay on the
table, and which, by the law of play, was now his own.

"_Trente et le va_," he said. "I knew that it would come. Sir Arthur, I
half regret to rob thee thus, but I shall ask my slipper in hand paid.
Pardon me, too, if I chide thee for risking it in play. Gentlemen, there
is much in this little shoe, empty as it is."

He dandled it upon his finger, hardly looking at the winnings that lay
before him. "'Tis monstrous pretty, this little shoe," he said, rousing
himself from his half reverie.

"Confound thee, man!" cried Castleton, "that is the only thing we
grudge. Of sovereigns there are plenty at the coinage--but of a shoe
like this, there is not the equal this day in England!"

"So?" laughed Law. "Well, consider, 'tis none too easy to make the run
of _trente_. Risk hath its gains, you know, by all the original laws of
earth and nature."

"But heard you not the wager which was proposed over the little shoe?"
broke in Castleton. "Wilson, here, was angered when I laid him odds that
there was but one woman in London could wear this shoe. I offered him
odds that his good friend, Kittie Lawrence--"

"Nor had ye the right to offer such bet!" cried Wilson, ruffled by the
doings of the evening.

"I'll lay you myself there's no woman in England whom you know with foot
small enough to wear it," cried Castleton.

"Meaning to me?" asked Law, politely.

"To any one," cried Castleton, quickly, "but most to thee, I fancy,
since 'tis now thy shoe!"

"I'll lay you forty crowns, then, that I know a smaller foot than that
of Madam Lawrence," said Law, suavely. "I'll lay you another forty
crowns that I'll try it on for the test, though I first saw the lady
this very morning. I'll lay you another forty crowns that Madam Lawrence
can not wear this shoe, though her I have never seen."

These words rankled, though