"Yes, he is a professional man with the cards," Signore Difranco said. "The game that night was just to, how do you say it in English, set me up for a bigger fall at a later date."

"Did it work?"

"Yes, it did. He won almost $1,000 from me, and he would have won more had I remained at the table."

Then Signore Difranco winked. "But you know, William, sometimes defeat is the better part of valor."

"Don't you mean discretion?" I corrected, recalling the classes in Shakespeare and classical literature I had taken on Hogback Ridge. That, I remembered, was the phrase uttered by Falstaff in Henry IV.

"Not at all. By the time the second game came around, Doc had remembered where he had seen me...

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