the best. He remembered his miner comrades of the Arctic. They
were the stupid lowly, they did the hard work and were robbed of
the fruit of their toil just as was the old woman making wine in
the Sonoma hills; and yet they had finer qualities of truth, and
loyalty, and square-dealing than did the men who robbed them. The
winners seemed to be the crooked ones, the unfaithful ones, the
wicked ones. And even they had no say in the matter. They played
the cards that were given them; and Luck, the monstrous, mad-god
thing, the owner of the whole shebang, looked on and grinned. It
was he who stacked the universal card-deck of existence.

There was no justice in the deal. The little men that came, the
little pulpy babies, were not even asked if they wanted to try a
flutter at the game. They had no choice. Luck jerked them into
life, slammed them up against the jostling table, and told them:
"Now play, damn you, play!" And they did their best, poor little
devils. The play of some led to steam yachts and mansions; of
others, to the asylum or the pauper's ward. Some played the one
same card, over and over, and made wine all their days in the
chaparral, hoping, at the end, to pull down a set of false teeth
and a coffin. Others quit the game early, having drawn cards
that called for violent death, or famine in the Barrens, or
loathsome and lingering disease. The hands of some called for
kingship and irresponsible and numerated power; other hands
called for ambition, for wealth in untold sums, for disgrace and
shame, or for women and wine.

As for himself, he had drawn a lucky hand, though he could not
see all the cards. Somebody or something might get him yet. The
mad god, Luck, might be tricking him along to some such end. An