In December he received a letter from Corry Hutchinson.  He had just seen Mabel Holmes.  She was all she ought to be, to be Lawrence Pentfield’s wife, he wrote.  He was enthusiastic, and his letter sent the blood tingling through Pentfield’s veins.  Other letters followed, one on the heels of another, and sometimes two or three together when the mail lumped up.  And they were all in the same tenor.  Corry had just come from Myrdon Avenue; Corry was just going to Myrdon Avenue; or Corry was at Myrdon Avenue.  And he lingered on and on in San Francisco, nor even mentioned his trip to Detroit.

Lawrence Pentfield began to think that his partner was a great deal in the company of Mabel Holmes for a fellow who was going east to see his people.  He even caught himself worrying about it at times, though he would have worried more had he not known Mabel and Corry so well.  Mabel’s letters, on the other hand, had a great deal to say about Corry.  Also, a thread of timidity that was near to disinclination ran through them concerning the trip in over the ice and the Dawson marriage.  Pentfield wrote back heartily, laughing at her fears, which he took to be the mere physical ones of danger and hardship rather than those bred of maidenly reserve.

But the long winter and tedious wait, following upon the two previous long winters, were telling upon him.  The superintendence of the men and the pursuit of the pay streak could not break the irk of the daily round, and the end of January found him making occasional trips to Dawson, where he could forget his identity for a space at the gambling tables.  Because he could afford to lose, he won, and “Pentfield’s luck” became a stock phrase among the faro players.

His luck ran with him till the second week in February.  How much farther it might have run is conjectural; for, after one big game, he never played again.

It was in the Opera House that it occurred, and for an hour it had seemed that he could not place his money on a card without making the card a winner.  In the lull at the end of a deal, while the game-keeper was shuffling the deck, Nick Inwood the owner of the game, remarked, apropos of nothing:-

“I say, Pentfield, I see that partner of yours has been cutting up monkey-shines on the outside.”

“Trust Corry to have a good time,” Pentfield had answered; “especially when he has earned it.”

“Every man to his taste,” Nick Inwood laughed; “but I should scarcely call getting married a good time.”

“Corry married!” Pentfield cried, incredulous and yet surprised out of himself for the moment.

“Sure,” Inwood said.  “I saw it in the ’Frisco paper that came in over the ice this morning.”

“Well, and who’s the girl?” Pentfield demanded, somewhat with the air of patient fortitude with which one takes the bait of a catch and is aware at the time of the large laugh bound to follow at his expense.