letter perfect.

The Captain, now no longer under the necessity of employing all his
energies to suppress his natural instincts, gradually recovered form,
and eventually the game stood at one hundred and forty-nine all,
Malooney to play. The Captain had left the balls in a position that
would have disheartened any other opponent than Malooney. To any
other opponent than Malooney the Captain would have offered
irritating sympathy. "Afraid the balls are not rolling well for you
to-night," the Captain would have said; or, "Sorry, sir, I don't seem
to have left you very much." To-night the Captain wasn't feeling
playful.

"Well, if he scores off that!" said Dick.

"Short of locking up the balls and turning out the lights, I don't
myself see how one is going to stop him," sighed the Captain.

The Captain's ball was in hand. Malooney went for the red and hit--
perhaps it would be more correct to say, frightened--it into a
pocket. Malooney's ball, with the table to itself, then gave a solo
performance, and ended up by breaking a window. It was what the
lawyers call a nice point. What was the effect upon the score?

Malooney argued that, seeing he had pocketed the red before his own
ball left the table, his three should be counted first, and that
therefore he had won. Dick maintained that a ball that had ended up
in a flower-bed couldn't be deemed to have scored anything. The
Captain declined to assist. He said that, although he had been
playing billiards for upwards of forty years, the incident was new to