"I don't want it! I won't have it!" said Clarence with a swift
recollection of the manipulation of his purse that morning, and a sudden
distrust of all mankind.

"There!" He turned back to the table and laid the money on the first
vacant card he saw. In another moment, as it seemed to him, it was raked
away by the dealer. A sense of relief came over him.

"There!" said the man, with an awed voice and a strange, fatuous look
in his eye. "What did I tell you? You see, it's allus so! Now," he added
roughly, "get up and get out o' this, afore you lose the boots and shirt
off ye."

Clarence did not wait for a second command. With another glance round
the room, he began to make his way through the crowd towards the front.
But in that parting glance he caught a glimpse of a woman presiding over
a "wheel of fortune" in a corner, whose face seemed familiar. He looked
again, timidly. In spite of an extraordinary head-dress or crown that
she wore as the "Goddess of Fortune," he recognized, twisted in its
tinsel, a certain scarlet vine which he had seen before; in spite of the
hoarse formula which she was continually repeating, he recognized the
foreign accent. It was the woman of the stage-coach! With a sudden dread
that she might recognize him, and likewise demand his services "for
luck," he turned and fled.

Once more in the open air, there came upon him a vague loathing
and horror of the restless madness and feverish distraction of this
half-civilized city. It was the more powerful that it was vague, and the
outcome of some inward instinct. He found himself longing for the pure
air and sympathetic loneliness of the plains and wilderness; he began to