He paused, and in the silence the Young Doctor pushed a glass of milk and
brandy towards him. He sipped the contents. The others were in a state
of tension. Kitty Tynan's eyes were fixed on him as though hypnotised,
and the Young Doctor was scarcely less interested; while the widow
knitted harder and faster than she had ever done, and she could knit very
fast indeed.

"It was the betting-book of Thwaite's, and it dated back almost to the
time of the conquest of Quebec. Great men dead and gone long ago--near
a hundred and fifty years ago-had put down their bets in the book, for
Thwaite's was then what it is now, the highest and best sporting club in
the world."

Kitty Tynan's face had a curious look, for there was a club in Askatoon,
and it was said that all the "sports" assembled there. She had no idea
what Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street would look like; but that did
not matter. She supposed it must be as big as the Askatoon Court House
at least.

"Bets--bets--bets by men whose names were in every history, and the names
of their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons; and all betting on the
oddest things as well as the most natural things in the world. Some of
the bets made were as mad as the bets I made myself. Oh! ridiculous,
some of them were; and then again bets on things that stirred the world
to the centre, from the loss of America to the beheading of Louis XVI.

"It was strange enough to see the half-dozen lines of a bet by a marquis
whose great-grandson bet on the Franco-German War; that the Government
which imposed the tea-tax in America would be out of power within six
months; or that the French Canadians would join the colonists in what is