would throw back nines and tens for no apparent reason.  Finally Ellis dealt him a queen, which he kept, betting ten chips.  His next card was a seven-spot.  He signed to Ellis that he would stand.  Ellis drew twenty in three cards.  Vandover could not restrain an exclamation of impatience at the Dummy’s stupidity.  What a fool a man must be to stand on seventeen with only two in the game.  All at once he tossed twenty dollars across the table to Ellis, saying, “Give me that in chips.  I’m coming in again.”  Once more he resumed his seat at the table, and Ellis dealt him a hand.

But Vandover’s interruption had for an instant taken Ellis’ mind from the game.  He stirred in his chair and looked about the room, puffing out his cheeks and blowing between his lips.

“Say, this room is close enough to strangle you.  Open the window behind you, Van, you’re nearest to it.”  As Vandover raised the curtain he uttered a cry:  “Look here! will you?”

It was morning; the city was flooded by the light of the sun already an hour high.  The sky was without a cloud.  Over the roofs and amongst the gray maze of telegraph wires swarms of sparrows were chittering hoarsely, and as Vandover raised the window he could hear the newsboys far below in the streets chanting the morning’s papers.

“Come on, Van!” exclaimed Ellis impatiently; “we’re waiting for you.”

That night decided it.  From that time on, Vandover’s only pleasure was gambling.  Night and day he sat over the cards, the passion growing upon him as he continued to lose, for his ill luck was extraordinary.  It was a veritable mania, a wild blind frenzy that knew no limit.  At first he had contented himself with a game in which twenty or thirty dollars was as much as he could win or lose at a sitting, but soon this palled upon him; he was obliged to raise the stakes continually in order to arouse in him the interest, the keen tense excitement, that his jaded nerves craved.

The five hundred dollars that he had drawn from the ten thousand, the first payment on his old home, melted away within a week.  Only a few years ago Vandover would have stopped to reflect upon the meaning of this, would have resisted the temptation that drew him constantly to the gambling-table, but the idea of resistance never so much as occurred to him.  He did not invest his fifteen thousand, but drew upon it continually to satisfy his last new craze.  It was not with any hope of winning that he gambled—­the desire of money was never strong in him—­it was only the love of the excitement of the moment.