and thus enable him to deal two with one motion if the occasion demanded.  This roughness would likewise enable him to detect the hidden presence of a marked card by the faintest scratching sound when he dealt.  In this manipulation it would be necessary, also, to shave the edges of some of the pasteboards a trifle, so that, when the deck was forced firmly against one side of the box, there would be exposed a fraction of the small figure in the left-hand corner of the concealed cards.  Long practice in the art of jugglery lends such proficiency as to baffle discovery and rob the game of its uncertainty as surely as the player is robbed of his money.  It is, of course, vital that the confederate case-keeper be able to interpret the dealer’s signs perfectly in order to move the sliding ebony disks to correspond, else trouble will accrue at the completion of the hand when the cases come out wrong.

Having completed his instructions, the proprietor went forward, and Cherry wormed her way towards the roulette-wheel.  She wished to watch Glenister, but could not get near him because of the crowd.  The men would not make room for her.  Every eye was glued upon the table as though salvation lurked in its rows of red and black.  They were packed behind it until the croupier had barely room to spin the ball, and although he forced them back, they pressed forward again inch by inch, drawn by the song of the ivory, drunk with its worship, maddened by the breath of Chance.

Cherry gathered that Glenister was still winning, for a glimpse of the wheel-rack between the shoulders of those ahead showed that the checks were nearly out of it.

Plainly it was but a question of minutes, so she backed out and took her station beside the faro-table where the Bronco Kid was dealing.  His face wore its colorless mask of indifference; his long white hands moved slowly with the certainty that betokened absolute mastery of his art.  He was waiting.  The ex-crap dealer was keeping cases.

The group left the roulette-table in a few moments and surrounded her, Glenister among the others.  He was not the man she knew.  In place of the dreary hopelessness with which he had left her, his face was flushed and reckless, his collar was open, showing the base of his great, corded neck, while the lust of the game had coarsened him till he was again the violent, untamed, primitive man of the frontier.  His self-restraint and dignity were gone.  He had tried the new ways, and they were not for him.  He slipped back, and the past swallowed him.

After leaving Cherry he had sought some mental relief by idly risking the silver in his pocket.  He had let the coins lie and double, then double again and again.  He had been indifferent whether he won or lost, so assumed a reckless disregard for the laws of probability, thinking that he would shortly lose the money he had won and then go home.  He did not want it.  When his luck remained the same, he raised the stakes, but it did not change—­he could not lose.  Before he realized it, other men were betting with him, animated purely by greed and craze of the sport.  First one, then another joined till game after game was closed, and each moment the crowd had grown in size and enthusiasm so that its fever crept into him, imperceptibly at first, but ever increasing, till the mania mastered him.