DEAR SILVER,

I have got into a most awful scrape. That fellow Percival
is here, and Dolly Longstaff, and Nidderdale, and
Popplecourt, and Jack Hindes, and Perry who is in the
Coldstreams, and one or two more, and there has been a lot
of cards, and I have lost ever so much money. I wouldn't
mind it so much but Percival has won it all,--a fellow
I hate; and now I owe him--three thousand four hundred
pounds! He has just told me he is hard up and that he
wants the money before the week is over. He can't be hard
up because he has won from everybody;--but of course I had
to tell him that I would pay him.

Can you help me? Of course I know that I have been a fool.
Percival knows what he is about and plays regularly for
money. When I began I didn't think that I could lose above
twenty or thirty pounds. But it got on from one thing to
another, and when I woke this morning I felt I didn't know
what to do with myself. You can't think how the luck went
against me. Everybody says that they never saw such cards.

And now do tell me how I am to get out of it. Could you
manage it with Mr. Moreton? Of course I will make it all
right with you some day. Moreton always lets you have
whatever you want. But perhaps you couldn't do this
without letting the governor know. I would rather anything
than that. There is some money owing at Oxford also, which
of course he must know.

I was thinking that perhaps I might get it from some of
those fellows in London. There are people called Comfort
and Criball, who let men have money constantly. I know two
or three up at Oxford who have had it from them. Of course
I couldn't go to them as you could do, for, in spite of
what the governor said to us up in London one day, there
is nothing that must come to me. But you could do anything
in that way, and of course I would stand to it.

I know you won't throw me over, because you always have
been such a brick. But above all things don't tell the
governor. Percival is such a nasty fellow, otherwise I
shouldn't mind it. He spoke this morning as though I was
treating him badly,--though the money was only lost last
night; and he looked at me in a way that made me long to
kick him. I told him not to flurry himself, and that he
should have his money. If he speaks to me like that again
I will kick him.

I will be at Matchin