Then it was that The Duke
broke into a light laugh and, touching the kneeling Frenchman on his
cheek with his finger-tips, said: "Look here, my man, you shouldn't
play the game till you know how to do it and with whom you play." Then,
handing him back the money, he added: "I want money, but not yours."
Then, as he sat looking at the unfortunate wretch dividing his attention
between his money and his bleeding fingers, he once more broke into a
gentle laugh that was not good to hear.
The Duke was by all odds the most striking figure in the Company of
the Noble Seven, and his word went farther than that of any other.
His shadow was Bruce, an Edinburgh University man, metaphysical,
argumentative, persistent, devoted to The Duke. Indeed, his chief
ambition was to attain to The Duke's high and lordly manner; but,
inasmuch as he was rather squat in figure and had an open, good-natured
face and a Scotch voice of the hard and rasping kind, his attempts at
imitation were not conspicuously successful. Every mail that reached
Swan Creek brought him a letter from home. At first, after I had got
to know him, he would give me now and then a letter to read, but as the
tone became more and more anxious he ceased to let me read them, and I
was glad enough of this. How he could read those letters and go the pace
of the Noble Seven I could not see.
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