To them heat and cold, the dog-star or twenty degrees below zero, make no difference while the croupier is there, with his rouleaux before him, capable of turning up the card.

They know that the chance is against them,--one in twenty, let us say,--and that in the long-run one in twenty is as good as two to one to effect their ruin.

For a day they may stand against one in twenty, as this man had done.

For two or three days, for a week, they may possibly do so; but they know that the doom must come at last,--as it does come invariably,--and they go on.

But our friend, the Englishman who had won the money, was not such a one as these, at any rate in regard to Monaco.