I remember that it was my first glimpse of the human countenance under the sway of wicked and absorbing passions.  Hitherto my dreams had all been of beauty—­of lovely shapes or noble figures cast in heroic mould.  Henceforth, these ideal groups must visit my imagination mixed with the bulging eyes of greed and the contortions of hate masking their hideousness under false smiles or hiding them behind the motions of riotous jollity.  I was horrified, I was sickened, and I was frightened to the very soul, but the fascination of the spectacle held me; I watched the men and I watched the play and soon I forgot the tempest also, or remembered it only when my small retreat flared into sudden whiteness, or some gust, heavier than the rest, toppled the bricks from the chimneys above us and sent them crashing down upon the rain-soaked roof.

The stranger was winning.  I saw the heap of bills beside him grow and grow while that of his opponent dwindled.  I saw the latter smile—­smile softly at each toss of his losings across the board; but there was no mirth in his smile, nor was there any common satisfaction in the way the other’s hand closed over his gains.

“He will have it all,” I thought.  “The Claymore Tavern will soon change owners;” and I was holding my breath over the final stake when suddenly the house gave a lurch, resettled, then lurched again.  The tempest had become a hurricane, and with its first swoop a change took place in the stranger’s luck.

The bills which had all gone one way began slowly to recross the board, first singly, then in handfuls.  They fell within Spencer’s grasp, and the smile with which he hailed their return was not the smile with which he had seen them go, but a steady grin such as I had beheld on the faces of sculptured demons.  It frightened me, this smile.  I could see nothing else; but, when at another crashing peal I ducked my head, I found on lifting it that my eyes sought instinctively the rigid back of the stranger instead of the open face of Spencer.  The passion of the winner was nothing to that of the loser; and from this moment on, I saw but the one figure, and thrilled to the one hope—­that an opportunity would soon come for me to see the face of the man whose back told such a tale of fury and suspense.

But it remained fixed on Spencer, and the cards.  The roof might fall—­he was past heeding.  A bill or two only lay now at his elbow, and I could perceive the further stiffening of his already rigid muscles as he dealt out the cards.  Suddenly hard upon a rattling peal which seemed to unite heaven and earth, I heard shouted out: 

“Half-past two!  The game stops at three.”

“Damn your greedy eyes!” came back in a growl.  Then all was still, fearfully still, both in the atmosphere outside and in that within, during which I caught sight of the stranger’s hand moving slowly around to his back and returning as slowly forward, all under cover of the table-top and a stack of half-empty bottles.