Checkers

all over now, but cashing the ticket--so long;" and he dodged away through the crowd.

Oddly enough, it did not at the moment strike me as in the least peculiar that I should have been conversing on a basis of perfect equality with a companion of stable boys and a frequenter of gambling hells. Nothing further.

The spirit of easy, good-natured camaraderie was in the very air; and in the singleness of purpose which animated all--the picking of the winner--all ranks seemed leveled, all social barriers cast aside.

Again, he had proved in our few minutes' talk a new, and to me an interesting, type; and I resolved to keep the appointment, if for nothing more than to study him further.

He was a young man, certainly not over twenty-three, short, slight, and becomingly dressed. His face was thin, smooth-shaven and red, but somehow peculiarly prepossessing. His deep blue eyes and long black lashes might have atoned for much less attractive features; and the lines which ran from his well-shap