that it was a very nice game certainly; and the French
gentleman seeming by this time to have had quite enough beer, insisted,
before they went to the docks--which was essential--that they should see
just one game played.

'As he insisted on paying Mr Chase for all the time consumed with him,
and as his servant, of course, could not object, the party adjourned
to the "Select Subscription Ground" at once. In the ground there was a
quiet, insignificant-looking little man, smoking a cigar; and as
they were so few, he was asked to assist, which, after considerable
hesitation and many apologies for his bad play, he did. The end is of
course guessed. The French gentleman was a foolish victim, with more
money than wits, who backed himself to do almost impossible feats, when
it was evident he could not play at all, and laid sovereigns against the
best player, who was the little stranger, doing the easiest. What with
the excitement, and what with the beer, which was probably spiced with
some unknown relish a little stronger than nutmeg, Mr Chase could not
help joining in winning the foreign gentleman's money; it seemed no
harm, he had so much of it.

'By a strange concurrence of events, it so happened that by random
throws the Frenchman sometimes knocked all the pins down at a
single swoop, though he clearly could not play--Mr Chase was sure
of that--while the skilful player made every now and then one of the
blunders to which the best players are liable. That the tradesman lost
forty sovereigns will be easily understood; and did his tale end here
it would have differed so little from a hundred others as scarcely to
deserve telling; but it will surprise many, as it did me, to learn that
he then walked to and from his own house--a distance of precisely a
mile each way--fetched a bill for thirty pounds, which a customer had
recently paid him, got it discounted, went back to the skittle-ground,
and, under the same malignant star, lost the whole.

'It was the only case in my experience of the work going on smoothly
after such a break. I never could account for it, nor could Mr Chase.
Great was the latter's disgust, on setting the police to work, to find
that the French nobleman, his servant, and the quiet stranger, were all
dwellers within half a mile or so of his own house, and slightly known
to him--men who had trusted, and very successfully, to great audacity
and well-arranged disguise.'

A vast deal of gambling still goes o