Beaucaire again wet his lips, staring at the uncovered cards in his hands.  He could not lose; with what he held no combination was possible which could beat him.  Yet, in spite of this knowledge, the cold, sneering confidence of Kirby, brought with it a strange fear.  The man was a professional gambler.  What gave him such recklessness?  Why should he be so eager to risk such a sum on an inferior hand?  McAfee, sitting next him, leaned over, managed to gain swift glimpse at what he held, and eagerly whispered to him a word of encouragement.  The Judge straightened up in his chair, grasped a filled glass some one had placed at his elbow, and gulped down the contents.  The whispered words, coupled with the fiery liquor, gave him fresh courage.

“By God, Kirby!  I’ll do it!” he blurted out.  “You can’t bluff me on the hand I’ve got.  Give me a sheet of paper, somebody—­yes, that will do.”

He scrawled a half-dozen lines, fairly digging the pen into the sheet in his fierce eagerness, and then signed the document, flinging the paper across toward Kirby.

“There, you blood-sucker,” he cried insolently.  “Is that all right?  Will that do?”

The imperturbable gambler read it over slowly, carefully deciphering each word, his thin lips tightly compressed.

“You might add the words, ’This includes every chattel slave legally belonging to me,’” he said grimly.

“That is practically what I did say.”

“Then you can certainly have no objection to putting it in the exact words I choose,” calmly.  “I intend to have what is coming to me if I win, and I know the law.”

Beaucaire angrily wrote in the required extra line.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Let McAfee there sign it as a witness, and then toss it over into the pile.”  He smiled, showing a line of white teeth beneath his moustache.  “Nice little pot, gentlemen—­the Judge must hold some cards to take a chance like that,” the words uttered with a sneer.  “Fours, at least, or maybe he has had the luck to pick a straight flush.”

Beaucaire’s face reddened, and his eyes grew hard.

“That’s my business,” he said tersely.  “Sign it, McAfee, and I’ll call this crowing cockerel.  You young fool, I played poker before you were born.  There now, Kirby, I’ve covered your bet.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to raise it?”

“You hell-hound—­no!  That is my limit, and you know it.  Don’t crawl now, or do any more bluffing.  Show your hand—­I’ve called you.”

Kirby sat absolutely motionless, his cards lying face down upon the table, the white fingers of one hand resting lightly upon them, the other arm concealed.  He never once removed his gaze from Beaucaire’s face, and his expression did not change, except for the almost insulting sneer on his lips.  The silence was profound, the deeply interested men leaning forward, even holding their breath in intense eagerness.  Each realized that a fortune lay on the table; knew that the old Judge had madly staked his all on the value of those five unseen cards gripped in his fingers.  Again, as though to bolster up his shaken courage, he stared at the face of each, then lifted his blood-shot eyes to the impassive face opposite.