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Gordon waved him off with a smile and a wheeze. “Don’t bother me now. I’ve got ‘im. I’m laying f’r the old dog. Whist!”

“Got nothing!” snarled the Colonel. “You try that on if you want to. Just swing that man in there if you think it’s healthy for him. Just as like as not, you’ll slip up on that little trick.”

“Ha! Say you so, old True Penny? The Kunnel has met a foeman worthy of his steel,” said Foster, in great glee, as he bent above the Colonel. “I know. How do I know, quotha? By the curve on the Kunnel’s back. The size of the parabola described by that backbone accurately gauges his adversary’s skill. But, by the way, gentlemen, have you–but that’s a nice point, and I refer all nice points to Professor Knapp. Professor, is it in good taste to make remarks concerning the dress or features of another?”

“Certainly not,” answered Knapp, a handsome young fellow with a yellow mustache.

“Not when the person is an esteemed public character, like the Colonel here? What I was about to remark, if it had been proper, was that the old fellow is getting wofully bald. He’ll soon be bald as an egg.”

“Say!” asked the Colonel, “I want to know how long you’re going to keep this thing up? Somebody’s dummed sure t’ get hurt soon.”

“There, there! Colonel,” said Brown, soothingly, “don’t get excited; you’ll lose the rubber. Don’t mind ’em. Keep cool.”

“Yes, keep cool, Kunnel; it’s only our solicitude for your welfare,” chipped in Foster. Then, addressing the crowd in a general sort of way, he speculated: “Curious how a man, a plain American citizen like Colonel Peavy, wins a place in the innermost affections of a whole people.”

“That’s so!” murmured the rest.

“He can’t grow bald without deep sympathy from his fellow-citizens. It amounts to a public calamity.”

The old Colonel glared in speechless wrath.

“Say! gents,” pleaded Gordon, “let up on the old man for the present. He’s going to need all of himself if he gets out o’ the trap he’s in now.” He waved, his fat hand over the Colonel’s head, and smiled blandly at the crowd hugging the stove.

“My head may be bald,” grated the old man with a death’s-head grin, indescribably ferocious, “but it’s got brains enough in it to skunk any man in this crowd three games out o’ five.”

“The ol’ man rather gits the laugh on y’ there, gents,” called Robie from the other side of the counter. “I hain’t seen the old skeesix play better’n he did last night, in years.”

“Not since his return from Canada, after the war, I reckon,” said Amos, from the kerosene barrel.

“Hold on, Amos,” put in the Judge warningly, “that’s outlawed. Talking about being bald and the war reminds me of the night Walters and I—- By the way, where is Walters to-night?”

“Sick,” put in the Colonel, straightening up exultantly. “I waxed him three straight games last night. You won’t see him again till spring. Skunked him once, and beat him twice.”

“Oh, git out.”

“Hear the old seed twitter!”

“Did you ever notice, gentlemen, how lying and baldness go together?” queried Foster, reflectively.

“No! Do they?”

“Invariably. I’ve known many colossal liars, and they were all as bald as apples.”

The Colonel was getting nervous, and was so slow that even Gordon (who could sit and stare at the board a full half hour without moving) began to be impatient.

“Come, Colonel, marshal your forces a little more promptly. If you’re going at me echelon, sound y’r bugle; I’m ready.”

“Don’t worry,” answered the Colonel, in his calmest nasal. “I’ll accommodate you with all the fight you want.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” began the Judge again, addressing the crowd generally, as he moved back to the stove and lit another cigar, “did it ever occur to you that it is a little singular a man should get bald on the top of his head first? Curious fact. So accustomed to it we no longer wonder at it. Now see the Colonel there. Quite a growth of hair on his clapboarding, as it were, but devilish thin on his roof.”