Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/92

68 "No? I should imagine, by the way in which you're going it, that you're like that third player in Punch, who held thirteen trumps at whist."

I laughed. Curiously enough, my luck continued. It was quite a record in its way. I never lost; I always had three trumps.

"Do you know," observed Mr. Armitage, when I again took Nap, "that I'm nearly thirty sovereigns to the bad? I think it's quite as well we didn't make it pounds."

"I'm about that much nearer the workhouse since I left Victoria," chimed in his friend.

I was amazed.

"You don't mean that I've won sixty pounds?"

"It looks uncommonly like it."

It was incredible. And yet my luck continued. I went three tricks that round, and made them. Then another three, then four, and then another Nap. Reckon that up, and you'll find that, with the points and the dealer's ten shilling contribution to the pool, I had made thirteen pounds in considerably less than half that number of minutes.

"You will excuse my asking you," said Mr. Burchell, as he was settling for the Nap, "if that pack of cards is bewitched?"

"I think it possible," I answered, half in jest and half in earnest "There is a curious history attached to them, at any rate."

"There will be another curious history attached to them if this goes on much longer."

It did go on. In the very next hand I signalled four, and made them. My antagonists began to look blank; no wonder!