“H’lo, Casey!  Give yuh a chance to win back some of your losin’s, if you’re game to try it again,” called a man from the far end of the room.

Casey swore and hobbled back to him, let himself stiffly down into a chair and dropped his crutches with a rattle of hard wood.  Being a cripple was growing painful, besides being very inconvenient.  The male half of Lund had practically suspended business that day to hover around him and exchange comments upon his looks.  Casey had received a lot of sympathy that day, and only the fact that he had remained sequestered behind the curtained arch that cut across the rear of The Club saved him from receiving a lot more.  But of course there were mitigations.  Since walking was slow and awkward, Casey sat.  And since he was not a man to sit and twiddle thumbs to pass the time, Casey played poker.  That is how he explained it afterwards.  He had not intended to play poker for twenty-four hours, but tie up a man’s leg so he can’t walk, and he’s got to do something.

Wherefore Casey played,—­and did not win back what he had lost earlier in the day.  Daylight grew dim, and some one came over and lighted a hanging gasoline lamp that threw into tragic relief the painted hollows under Casey’s eyes, which were beginning to look very bloodshot around the blue of them.

Once, while the bartender was bringing drinks—­you are not to infer that Casey was drunk; he was merely a bit hazy over details—­Casey pulled out his dollar watch and looked at it.  Eight-thirty—­the show must be pretty well started, by now.  He thought he might venture to hobble over to Bill’s and have those dog-gone straps taken off before he was crippled for sure.  But he did not want to do anything to embarrass the show lady.  Besides, he had lost a great deal of money, and he wanted to win some of it back.  He still had time to make that train, he remembered.  It was reported an hour late, some one said.

So Casey rubbed his strapped leg, twisting his face at the cramp in his knee and letting his companions believe that his accident had given him a heritage of pain.  He hitched his lifted shoulder into an easier position and picked up another unfortunate assortment of five cards.

At ten o’clock Bill, the garage man, came and whispered something to Casey, who growled an oath and reached almost unconsciously for his crutches before trying to get up; so soon is a habit born in a man.

“What they raisin’ thunder about?” he asked apathetically, when Bill had helped him across the gutter and into the street.  “Didn’t the crowd turn out like they expected?” Casey’s tone was dismal.  You simply cannot be a cripple for twenty-four hours, and sit up playing unlucky poker all night and all day and well into another night, without losing some of your animation; not even if you are Casey Ryan.  “Hell, I missed that train again,” he added heavily, when he heard it whistle into the railroad yard.