Twice before, way back in our college days, I had had a peep at this
gambling tempter of Bob's. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd
of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight
of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a
varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of money and taunts
at Bob until with a yell he left his usually well-leaded feet and
frightened me, whose allowance was dollars to Bob's cents, at the sum
total of the bet-cards he signed before he cleared the room of Yale money
and came to with a white face streaming with cold perspiration. These
events had passed out of my memory as the ordinary student breaks that any
hot-blooded youth is liable to make in like circumstances. As I looked at
Bob that day, while he tried to tell me that the business of Randolph &
Randolph would not be safe in his keeping, I had to admit to myself that I
was puzzled. I had regarded my old college chum not only as the best
mentally harnessed man I had ever met, but I knew him as the soul of
honour, that honour of the old story-books, and I could not credit his
being tempted to jeopardise unfairly the rights or property of another.
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