Then somebody found it was near midnight and the crowd begun to fall away.  Cousin Egbert strolls by and says don’t quit on his account—­that they can stick there and play their hunch till the bad place freezes over, for all he cares; and he goes over to the bar and takes a drink all by himself, which in him is a sign of great mental disturbance.

Then, for about twenty minutes, I was chatting with the Mes-dames Ballard and Price about what a grand 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 of a friendly contest, which he feels very much like having one, since he can be pushed just so far; but Cora says gambling has brutalized him.