the table, but to all seeming not noticing the game. At length,
suddenly rousing himself, he leant over and said a few words, in a
whisper, to the croupier, who, in an equally low tone, communicated with
his colleague across the table. A nod and a smile gave the quiet reply;
and Dalton, taking a piece of paper, scrawled a few figures on it with
a pencil, and with a motion so rapid as to be unseen by many of the
bystanders, the banker pushed several "rouleaux" of gold before Dalton,
and went on with the game.

Dalton broke one of the envelopes, and as the glittering pieces fell
out, he moved his fingers through them, as though their very touch was
pleasure. At last, with a kind of nervous impatience, he gathered up a
handful, and without counting, threw them on the table.

"How much?" said the croupier.

"The whole of it!" cried Dalton; and scarcely had he spoken, when he
won.

A murmur of astonishment ran through the room as he suffered the double
stake to remain on the board; which speedily grew into a loader ham
of voices, as the banker proceeded to count out the gains of a second
victory. Affecting an insight into the game and its chances which he did
not possess, Dalton now hesitated and pondered over his bets, increasing
his stake at one moment, diminishing it at another, and assuming all
the practised airs of old and tried gamblers. As though in obedience to
every caprice, the fortune of the game followed him unerringly. If he
lost, it was some mere trifle; when he won, the stake was sure to be
a large one. At length even this affected prudence--this mock
skill--became too slow for him, and he launched out into all his
accustomed recklessness. Not waiting to take in his winnings, he threw
fresh handfuls of gold amongst them, till the bank, trembling for its
safety, more than once had to reduce the stakes he wished to venture.

"They'd give him five hundred Naps, this moment if he 'd cease to play,"
said some one behind Dalton's chair. "There 's nothing the bank dreads
so much as a man with courage to back his luck."

"I 'd wish them a good-night," said another, "if I 'd have made so good
a-thing of it as that old fellow; he has won some thousand Napoleons, I
'm certain."

"_He_ knows better than that," said the former. "This is a 'run' with
him, and he feels it is. He 'll 'break' them before the night's over."

Dalton heard every word of this colloquy, and drank in the surmise as
greedily as did Macbeth t