time trying to
perfect his "system" and watching the other players at the club. His
burning ambition was to win back his fortune from the sharpers who had
fleeced him. He cursed himself all the while for his folly in playing
before he had learned the game. He knew the game now well enough, he
flattered himself; all day long he pondered on the combinations, and at
night myriads of cards floated through his head. He dreamed that he held
the bank, and that his old adversaries sat with pale faces opposite to
him aghast at their losses.

One evening in April he appeared at the club and changed his accumulated
dollars into chips. Fortune favored him that evening; his perfected
"system" worked the right way. He walked home early the next morning,
exhilarated and happy, with his pockets stuffed with bank-notes. He
smoothed out and counted the crumpled bills when he arrived at his
lodgings, and found that his pile had grown to $10,000, and for some
days his dreams of success were fulfilled, and he was "cock of the walk"
at the Turf and Jockey. He ordered champagne recklessly at dinner for
the other men, though he drank little himself.

He even wrote a little note to his wife in Paris, inclosing a
thousand-dollar bank-note to buy some bonnets and a gown.

"Nell will be surprised," he had said to himself, as he slipped the
notes into the envelope. "By gad, when I get all my money back, I shall
cut all this, and we will go to America on a ranch. Poor Nell! I haven't
treated her right. I fear I have made a dreadful mess of it all."

He went to the gaming-table that evening with a light heart, and with
other thoughts than his "system" in his mind--thoughts which had not
been his for years.

It happened that a young Oxford undergraduate was at the table, and the
young fellow had drank freely and had consumed a great deal of the
"Golden Boy," as he affectionately termed the club champagne. As a
consequence of these libations and of his utter ignorance of the game,
he played recklessly, and won from the beginning, although he was
surrounded by the most astute players in England. Poor Carey's cherished
"system" was powerless against the boy's absurd play and tremendous run
of luck, and his pile of chips melted away like snow in April, until he
had not a dollar left. He rushed down to the office of the club to get
the letter to his wife which he had put in the box, but the mail had
been sent away. He succeeded in borrowing $50 upon h