ent their feeling
themselves placed under an obligation he delicately allowed them to sign
for more than they had received a proposition which Saurin acceded to
with alacrity. Edwards, though he also signed, did so with hesitation,
and expressed fears about the safety of the transaction afterwards.

"Pooh!" said Saurin, "the I O U is mere waste paper; we are both under
age, and can snap our fingers at him if he demands payment. Besides, we
will pay him back the first time we win enough."

"But supposing we don't win enough? we have been very unlucky lately,"
objected Edwards.

"All the more reason why luck should change," replied Saurin. "But
suppose it does not, all the money will have gone into the fellow's
pocket, so we shall have repaid him in reality, don't you see?"

Edwards didn't quite. If you borrow a shilling of any one to gamble
with, and lose the stake and pay him with the shilling you have borrowed
from him, he does not exactly get what is due to him. However, Edwards
made no reply; no doubt Saurin knew best.

Crawley lost a little of the estimation in which he had been held that
term. It was extremely mean of Gould to gossip about his guest's
discomfitures at Nugget Towers, but the temptation to glorify himself at
the other's expense was too strong. He had plenty of pocket-money
always, and rich men or rich boys are sure to have some one to listen to
them with a certain amount of deference, and if Gould was not popular
exactly, his hampers were.

"I had Crawley to stay with me at Christmas, you know," he said. "He's
a good fellow; pity he's so awfully poor. He had never been in a decent
house before, and was awfully astonished. He had what they call `the
keeper's gun,' a ten-pound thing; our head-keeper twigged it. Good gun
enough, I daresay, but not what a gentleman has for himself. But he
could not use it; worst shot I ever met, by Jove! I showed him a thing
or two, and he began to improve by my hints. He is not above taking
hints, I will say that for him; and his riding! Why, I thought from
those prints in his room that he was ever such a swell; but I don't
believe he was ever outside a horse before. Even the ploughmen laughed
at him. `Get inside and pull up the windows!' they called out."

And so he went on, somewhat exaggerating all Crawley's failures, not so
much out of any ill-will as for self-glorification. You may know the
pastime of boring a hole through a chestnut, threa