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For the bare fraction of a second he shrank, shuddered visibly, and his drawn features took on a deathly pallor and the haggard look of secret despair.

“Curse the infernal luck!” he growled audibly. “Will it never change?”

The lookout, a man named Nathan Godard, also in Flood’s employ, smiled faintly.

“What’s the trouble, Kendall?” he asked, in bantering fashion. “Can’t you get ’em down right?”

“I didn’t get those bets down right, that’s evident,” snarled Kendall bitterly.

“So I see.”

“What you don’t see, Godard, isn’t worth seeing.”

“Oh, is that so? You must be a loser, Kendall.”

“About eighteen hundred.”

“Ah, well, don’t let it bother you,” laughed Godard, a bit maliciously. “You’re not playing for your life.”

Kendall evidently did not like the interference, nor the tone in which the last remarks were made. He glanced sharply up at the rather unprepossessing face of the speaker, and retorted curtly:

“No, not for my life, Nate Godard! But I’m playing for something as dear to me as life.”