balance,
or it might be with a deficit All he really knew was that he had
latterly drawn largely, and spent freely; and as Abel always smiled and
seemed satisfied, Peter concluded that his affairs needed no surer or
safer evidences of prosperity. To have examined ledgers and day-books
with such palpable proofs of solvency would have been, in his eyes, an
act of as great absurdity as that of a man who would not believe in the
sunshine till he had first consulted the thermometer.

"I must see Abel early to-morrow. Abel will set it all right," were
the conclusions to which he always came back; and if not very clearly
evident how, why, or by what means, still he was quite satisfied that
honest Kraus would extricate him from every difficulty. "The devil go
with it for black and red," said he, as he lay down in his bed. "I 'd
have plenty of cash in my pocket for everything this night, if it was
n't for that same table; and an ugly game it is as ever a man played.
Shuffle and cut; faites your 'jeu'; thirty-four--thirty-three; red
wins--black loses; there's the whole of it; sorrow more on 't except
the sad heart that comes afterwards!" These last words he uttered with a
deep sigh, and then turned his face to the pillow.

He passed a restless, feverish night; the sleep being more harassing
than even his waking moments, disturbed, as it was, by thoughts of
all he had lately gone through. All the tremendous excitement of the
play-table, heightened by the effect of wine, made up a wild chaotic
confusion in his brain, that was almost madness. He awoke repeatedly,
too, eager for daylight, and the time to call upon honest Abel. At these
times he would pace his room up and down, framing the speeches by
which he meant to open the interview. Kraus was familiar with his usual
"pleas." With Ireland and her stereotyped distresses he was thoroughly
conversant. Famine, fever, potato-rot, poor-rates, emigration, and
eviction were themes he could have almost discussed himself; but all he
recognized in them was an urgent demand for money, and an occasion for
driving the very hardest of bargains. The Russian remittances had been
less regular of late; so at least Abel averred, for Dalton neither knew
nor tried to know any details. The dates were frequently inconvenient,
and the places of payment oftentimes remote. Still, Abel was
civil,--nay, almost cordial; and what can any man ask for more than a
smile from his banker!

Dalton was quite at e