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The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small fire smoldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets. Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.

Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did not curse the little man, nor did the little man swear, in the abstract. Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the center of the room of rocks.

A great, gray stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped in his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person in the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparel was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting, fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated, their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it found the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned.

The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the glass.

Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a cave, cold, solemn, and damp.

“It’s your ante,” he said.

“What?” said the little man.

The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box. His visitors’ flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.

They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They whispered.

“A vampire!” said one.

“A ghoul!” said another.

“A Druid before the sacrifice,” murmured another.

“The shade of an Aztec witch doctor,” said the little man.

As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent a change. It became a livid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man like impassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. “It’s your ante!” With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife and advanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and, scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man’s legs. His quaking companions pushed him forward.

Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket.

“How much?” he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered.

The carbuncles faded.

“Three dollars,” said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang against the walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits with voices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket and placed “three ones” upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked at the little volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of playing cards.

Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the grey beard and the agonized little man played at poker. The three other men crouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror. Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. The candles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the corner expired.

Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down his hand and quavered: “I can’t call you this time, sir. I’m dead broke.”

“What?” shrieked the recluse. “Not call me! Villain Dastard! Cur! I have four queens, miscreant.” His voice grew so mighty that it could not fit his throat. He choked wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then the power of his body was concentrated in a word: “Go!”

He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. The little man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozen companions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plunged after the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushing brought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp in furious springs.

The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints of departing night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenished camp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide.

“Hello!” he shouted at their approach. “Be you fellers ready to go deer huntin’?”

Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers.

Finally, the pudgy man came forward.

“John,” he inquired, “do you know anything peculiar about this cave below here?”

“Yes,” said Willerkins at once; “Tom Gardner.”

“What?” said the pudgy man.

“Tom Gardner.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, you see,” said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls at his pipe, “Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these here parts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, and one time he got a-gamblin’ in one of them there dens. He went ter the dickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol’ his folks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl’. His leetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after–“

The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed of devils.

“I wouldn’t give a cuss if he had left me ‘nough money to get home on the doggoned, grey-haired red pirate,” he shrilled, in a seething sentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly.

“Oh, well,” he said, “we can tell a great tale when we get back to the city after having investigated this thing.”

“Go to the devil,” replied the little man.