“Quite right.  I wouldn’t care to restrain her in any way, if she cared to travel in other company.  Our work is well advanced toward completion, as it is.”

“Yet you came here with her?  Then what—?”

“Never mind what the relation may have been, my dear fellow.  It irks me now.  Especially does this sort of conversation irk me, because it is not fair to the young lady herself.”

Dunwody drew in his breath with a strong sigh.  He sat up straight in his chair, then rested an arm on the table, as he leaned forward toward the other.  “A young lady has had a poor protector who would not protect her name.  Of course!”

“In any case,” smiled Carlisle, forcing the frown away from his face, “my fortunes need mending now.  Do you think I could continue a journey down the river in company so strong at cards as yours?  At a later time, if you like, I will endeavor to get my revenge.”

“Suppose you have it now,” said Dunwody calmly.  “Haven’t you just heard me say I haven’t the means?”

“You have as much as I have.”

“Tut! tut!  I don’t borrow to play cards.”

“You do not need to borrow.  I say, your stake equals mine, and we will play at evens, too.  Come, deal one hand, poker between two, and to the hilt.”

The other man looked at him and gazed at the heaped pile of coins and notes which lay before him.  He himself was no pale-blooded opponent, nor usually disposed to slight the opportunities of the game.  “I don’t understand,” said he finally.  “Certainly I am not willing to pledge my land and ‘niggers,’ like our friend from Belmont here.  Perhaps my fall has been hard enough not to tempt me to go on with my sort of luck.  Suppose I decline!”

“You don’t understand me,” said Dunwody, looking him fair in the face.  “I said that your stake can easily be equal with this on the table.  I’ll play you just two out of three jack-pots between the two of us.  You see my stake.”

“But mine?”

“You can make it even by writing one name—­and correctly—­here on a piece of paper.  Full value—­yes, ten times as much as mine!  You are giving odds, man!”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You don’t want to understand me.  Come, now.  You, as an army man, ought to know something of the history of poker in these United States.  Listen, my friend.  Do you recall a certain game played by a man higher in authority—­younger than he is to-day—­a game played upon a snowbound train in the North country?  Do you remember what the stakes were—­then?  Do you recall that that man later became a president of the United States?  Come.  There is fine precedent for our little enterprise.”

The swift flush on the face of the other man made his answer.  Dunwody went on mercilessly: