rceive his own want of capacity and experience. Inflamed by this
reproof, the young nobleman challenged him to play for five hundred
pounds, with many opprobrious, or at least contemptuous terms of
defiance, which provoked our hero to accept the proposal. After the
other had disengaged himself from the old rooks, who were extremely
mortified at the interruption, the two young champions sat down, and
fortune acting with uncommon impartiality, Pickle, by the superiority of
his talents, in two hours won to the amount of as many thousand pounds,
for which he was obliged to take his antagonist's note, the sharpers
having previously secured his ready money.

Frantic with his loss, the rash young man would have continued the game,
and doubled stakes every time; so that Peregrine might have increased
his acquisition to ten times the sum he had gained; but he thought he
had already sufficiently chastised the presumption of the challenger,
and was unwilling to empower fortune to ravish from him the fruits of
his success; he therefore declined my lord's proposal, unless he would
play for ready money; and his lordship having in vain tried his credit
among the company, our adventurer withdrew, leaving him in an ecstasy of
rage and disappointment.

As the insolence of his behaviour had increased with his ill-luck, and
he had given vent to divers expressions which Peregrine took amiss, our
young gentleman resolved to augment his punishment, by teasing him with
demands which could not, he knew, be immediately satisfied; and next day
sent Pipes to his father's house with the note, which was drawn payable
upon demand. The debtor, who had gone to bed half-distracted with his
misfortune, finding himself waked with such a disagreeable dun, lost
all patience, cursed Pickle, threatened his messenger, blasphemed with
horrible execrations, and made such a noise as reached the ears of his
father, who, ordering his son to be called into his presence, examined
him about the cause of that uproar, which had disturbed the whole
family. The young gentleman, after having essayed to amuse him with
sundry equivocations, which served only to increase his suspicion and
desire of knowing the truth, acknowledged that he had lost some money
overnight at cards, to a gamester who had been so impertinent as to send
a message, demanding it that morning, though he had told the fellow that
it would not suit him to pay him immediately. The father, who was a
man of