Blair waited a moment. "Aren't you going to give me what's coming?" he
asked.

Slowly the single eye fixed him as before.

"I didn't know you had anything coming."

"Why, you just said forty dollars!"

There was no relenting in Kennedy's face.

"You owe that gentleman over there at the table for forty blues. I'll
settle with him."

Instinctively, as before, Blair's thin hand went to his throat,
clutching at the coarse flannel. He saw he was beaten.

"Well, give me a drink, anyway!"

Silently Mick took a big flask from the shelf and set it with a decanter
upon the bar. Filling the glass, Blair drained it at a gulp, refilled
and drained it--and then again.

"A little drop to take along with me," he whined.

Kennedy selected a pint bottle, filled it from the big flask, and
silently proffered it over the board.

Blair took the extended favor, glanced once more about the room, and