"I had a wife," he answered sorrowfully, "but----"

"I beg you pardon, Checkers," I said, "I hope I have n't hurt your feelings."

"No, you have n't hurt them," he replied. "I 've got my feelings educated. I 've had so many ups and downs I 've learned to take my medicine. But I 'll bet I 've had the toughest luck of any guy that ever lived. A' year ago I had money, a wife and friends, and was doing the Vanderbilt act. In two short weeks I lost them all. I 've been 'on my rollers' ever since.

"But say, you wouldn't have known me if you 'd seen me here with my wife that time--my glad rags on, a stove-pipe lid, patent leather kicks and a stone on my front. We came to Chicago to take in the Fair, and dropped in here to eat, one night.

"We sat at that table over there; I remember it as though it was yesterday. I ordered all kinds of supper, and at last the waiter brings in some cheese and crackers. It was a kind of a greenish, mouldy cheese--Rocquefort! Yes, I believe that's it. I goes against a little piece of it, and 'on the grave,' I like to fainted. Good!

Well, maybe you think it's good, but scratch your Uncle Dudley out of any race where they enter Rocquefort.

"Yes; those were happy days for me. I hate to think about them now. I had a good time while it lasted, though, and when they got me 'on the tram,' I had to go to hustlin'. Well, here comes supper. Excuse me now, while I get busy with a piece of that steak."

"But, Checkers," I expostulated, "I 'd like to hear the particulars.

You must have an interesting story to tell. And if you don't mind----"

"Oh, I do n't know. It's a hard luck story. I've had the hot end of it most of my life. But you can see for yourself that I'm no 'scrub.'

I come from good people, and I 've lived with good people. I can put up a parlor talk, or a bar-room talk. I've seen it all. But of course when a fellow 'hits the toboggan,' he gets to going down mighty fast."

"I appreciate all that, my boy," I said, "or I should n't have brought you here; and now if you will, while we are eating our dinner, give me a little sketch of how it all happened."

"Well, there is n't very much to tell as I know of--at least, anything that would interest you. To look back now it kind of seems as though things just pushed themselves along.

"You see, in the first place, my father and Uncle Giles, his brother, both fought in the war. Well, father got shot and came home a cripple.

About ten years afterwards I was born. Then father died, and mother got a pension. She had some little money besides. After the war Uncle Giles came back and hung around our house. He was 'flat,' and he couldn't get a job. But he finally got some pension-shark to push a pension through for him, and after that he 'pulled his freight' and went to Baltimore to live. Mother and I stayed here in Chicago.

"Well, I went to school until I was twelve, and then I went to work in a store. Mother's health was very bad, though, and at last we went South on account of her lungs. We went to San Antonio, and at first the air kind of did her good. I gets a job in a dry goods store, and things are rollin' pretty smooth, when one night mother takes to coughing, has a hemorrhage and dies.

"There's no use trying to tell you my feelings. Mother was dead and I was alone. There was hardly a soul to come to her funeral. The minister and a few of the neighbors came in--my G.o.d, it was simply awful. I was still a kid, only fifteen, you see, and I felt the terrible lonesomeness of it.

"Well, mother had saved considerable money--twenty-six hundred dollars in all. I sold our furniture and came to Chicago, and went to board with some friends of the family. I worked more or less for two or three years; but my money made me kind of 'flossy,' and whenever I 'd feel like it, I 'd just throw up the job and quit.

"After a while I got so I did n't try to work. I fell in with a gang of sports that used to hang around the pool-rooms, and pretty soon 'your little Willie' was losing his money right and left. The local meeting came along, and I took to going out to the track. I was nearly broke when one day a tout tried to 'get me down' on a 'good thing' he had. I told him I would n't play it, but I afterwards shook him and put twenty on it--I 'm a goat if it did n't win, and I pulled down a thousand. I looked for the guy who gave me the tip, but I could n't find him anywhere. I guess he fell dead with surprise himself--at least I 've never seen him since.

"Now, about that time, I had to quit the family I was living with.

They broke up housekeeping and moved away, leaving me on a cold, cold world. After that I did nothing but play the races. I followed them from town to town--St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, New Orleans--winning a little now and then, but up against it most of the time.

"I got the malaria down south, and I took a notion I 'd go to Hot Springs. You ever been there? No? Well say, you talk about your sportin' life--there is the onliest place to see it. Every kind of a gamblin' game you ever heard of runnin' wide--and everybody goes against 'em.

"I had heard that some of the games were crooked, and I thought I 'd be foxy and leave them alone. I left my leather full of bills with the clerk up in the hotel safe.

"A little more potato, please. Thanks, I am hungry, and that's no dream.

"Well, as I was saying, one day at the bath I meets a young guy in the cooling-room, and he springs a system to beat roulette, which figures out a mortal cinch. I do n't remember the system now, but I recollect we tried it ourselves on a private wheel, and it could n't lose. The only trouble with it was that with luck against us we might get soaked in doubling up before we win. But we made up our minds to begin it small, and be content with a little profit.

"We had a bank-roll of $600--four from me and two from him. I was to have two-thirds of the profits, because I risked two thirds of the stuff.

"It was Thursday night we set to try it. Thursday was always my Jonah day. I wanted to wait until Sat.u.r.day, but he did n't want to wait that long. I was to do the playing while he kept tab and told me what to do each whirl.

"Well, we buys a stack of a hundred chips, and runs them up to two hundred and fifty. I says, 'let's quit,' but he was stuck on pushing our luck while it came our way. We played along for half an hour, and hardly varied $50; then, all at once, we 'struck the slide,' and I had to buy another stack. We lost that; bought another and lost it, and stood in the hole $300.

"All the while we were playing the system, and I had a 'hunch' that if we kept on it would pull us out. So I starts to buy another stack when Kendall--his name was Arthur Kendall--stops me and says he wants to quit. Quit, with half our money gone! I was so sore I could have smashed him. And while we stood there arguing, without a nickel on the board, the wheel was rollin' dead our way--enough to have put us ahead of the game.

"I gave him his hundred, and told him to 'take it and chase himself'--I was through with him. I stuck to the game until five in the morning.

They got every cent I had in the world.

"Well, I went to the hotel and went to bed, but I lay there wondering how I was going to dig up the money to pay my bill, and give me a start when my luck turned again. The longer I wondered the tougher it seemed. Finally I ordered an absinthe frappe--it kind of gave me a new idea. I 'd put up a song to my Uncle Giles, and try to make a little 'touch.'

"I had n't seen or heard of him for half a dozen years, but I thought after all we had done for him, he could n't hardly lay down on his nephew.

"Well, I wrote him a letter that would have brought tears to a pair of gla.s.s eyes. Say, it was the literary effort of my life. Of course, I did n't just stick to the facts. Then I goes down and gets me a little breakfast, and begins to feel like myself again.

"This was Friday. Sat.u.r.day my hotel bill was coming due. I had to make a killin' somehow to get my trunk and clothes away.

"I chased myself from joint to joint, but I could n't get next to anything. There was n't a thing I could hock nor no one that I could 'give the borry.' Have you ever been flat broke, Mr. Preston, with not a nickel in your jeans; no one to stake you; no place to go, and nothing to keep you from starving to death? You haven't, eh? Well, then you do n't begin to know what trouble is. You feel as though every one had you 'sized,' or as though you were going to be arrested.

You can't help thinking about the stuff you blew so reckless when you were flush--the night you got out and spent a hundred, and say, if you only had it now! You take a paralyzed oath on your mother that if you ever get right again you'll 'salt your stuff' and be a 'tight-wad'--and then you remember you 're broke again. I 've been up against some dead tough luck, and I 've had some fancy crimps put in me, but somehow I 've never felt so 'on my uppers' as I did at the Springs that night.

"Say, if this hard-luck story of mine gets tiresome to you, ring me off. I did n't think I 'd be so long in getting to where my troubles began."

I a.s.sured him that I felt the tale immensely interesting, as indeed I did, not only in its mere detail, but taken in connection with the youth who sat there, telling me his story in his nave way, as unconcerned as though he had the Bank of England to draw upon. With not a penny in his pocket, or for aught I knew a place to sleep, it certainly seemed that, with the sparrows, he leaned most heavily on Providence.

"Let 's have the rest of it, Checkers," I said; "I 'm anxious to hear how you raised the wind."

He sipped his coffee and puffed his cigarette with a retrospective air, inhaling the smoke at every draught, or blowing it forth in little rings which he watched as they circled off into s.p.a.ce.

I waited in silence.

"Well," he continued, "it was nothing but 'gallop on after the torch.'

About 10 o'clock I blew into a joint that I had n't been to--a gambling house. There was a gang around the faro-bank, and I shoved in to see what was going on. I hope I may drop if Kendall was n't sitting there, howling, paralyzed full. He had a lot of chips in front of him, playin' 'em like a drunken sailor. He had down bets all over the board, and, honest, it gave me heart disease to see him play. He puts a stack on the ace to win. In a minute or two another player coppers it, and takes it down. I jumps in and grabs him by the arm. 'Hold on,' I hollered, 'Arthur, here's a piker that's touchin' you for your chips.'

"Say, there was trouble right away. The piker made a smash at me. I dodged and caught him an upper cut, and the bouncer grabbed him and threw him out. This sort of sobered Arthur up, and for a while he played 'em 'cagey.' I goes over by him, and puts up a bluff to the gang that I 'm a friend of his. You see I wanted to get him out before they got his money away. It was a 'pipe' he'd lose it all the minute his luck turned. But as long as I was n't playing myself, I knew I 'd better not get too gay, but I watched his bets, and stacked his chips, and saw that no one pinched his sleepers.

"Well, every few minutes he 'd call for a drink, and what do you think he was drinking? Sherry. Did you ever get a jag on sherry? Well, neither did I, but it gives you a 'beaut.' Arthur had a 'carry-over'

that lasted him for about three days. He 'd slap his chips down any old place. It was the funniest thing you ever saw. But he was playing in drunken luck, and I let him do what he wanted to.

"Well, to make a long story short, I finally 'cashed him in' for $200.

I got him into a hack, and took him to my room. But say, when I got that boy undressed and abed and asleep, I 'll tell you like these: I was just three minutes ahead of a fit, and the fit was gaining on me fast. I had to take a couple of absinthes before I could get myself together. But you ought to have seen Kendall in the morning. He had a horrible 'sorry' on. The wheels were buzzing around in his head until I believe if he 'd have put his fingers in his ears, they 'd have been cut off--I do on the square. He could n't remember a thing he 'd done, except that he started out on a 'sandy' after he left me playing roulette--the night before, you recollect, and he got a 'package'

aboard that he ought to have made at least two trips for.

"I gave him his money, and told him where I found him, and how I saved it for him, and he began to cry like a baby. You see his nerves were all to pieces. He wanted me to take him home; nothing would do but he must go home. He felt too rocky to go alone, and besides he could n't trust himself. He begged me for G.o.d's sake not to leave him or he 'd get full again, or shoot himself.

"I found out afterward that he had solemnly promised his girl that he 'd never get drunk again. That's what it was that gave him that awful 'sorry.' You know how it is when you love a girl. While you 're with her it seems dead easy to live decent, and do what 's right, and you promise anything. Then some day you get out with the gang and 'fall,'

and the next morning R. E. Morse is sitting up on the edge of your bed giving you the horrible ha-ha.

"Well, anyhow, I finally agreed to take him home. He lived in Clarksville, Ark. He gave me the roll to pay our bills with and buy the tickets and one thing and another, while he went down to the bath to boil out. But say, the hardest job of my life was not to 'pinch'

that coin and 'duck.' It was mine by rights. He 'd never have kept it if I had n't jumped in and saved it for him. But, thank G.o.d, I can say one thing, I never stole a cent in my life. I may have separated three or four guys from their stuff, perhaps, at different times; but they always got a run for their money, and if they dropped it it was n't my fault. So I just could n't bring myself to do it. And I was thankful afterwards that I did n't.

"The happiest year I ever had came to me on account of that trip--and the unhappiest. But I would n't give up the pleasant memories if I had to go through twice the troubles again.

"'The banister of life is full of slivers,' as old man Bradley used to say, and when a fellow 'hits the slide,' he's apt to pick up a splinter or two. But I 'll tell you, if you 've only got some happy times that you 've had with your mother or sisters, your wife, or your girl, to look back to and think about, when you 're in hard luck, it's a kind of a bracer, and saves your life----"