determined travellers, an
English gentleman, not very beautiful in his outward appearance, was
sauntering about the great hall of the gambling-house at Monte Carlo, in
the kingdom or principality of Monaco, the only gambling-house now left
in Europe in which idle men of a speculative nature may yet solace their
hours with some excitement. Nor is the amusement denied to idle ladies,
as might be seen by two or three highly-dressed _habituees_ who at this
moment were depositing their shawls and parasols with the porters. The
clock was on the stroke of eleven, when the gambling-room would be open,
and the amusement was too rich in its nature to allow of the loss of
even a few minutes. But this gentleman was not an _habitue_, nor was he
known even by name to any of the small crowd that was then assembled.
But it was known to many of them that he had had a great "turn of luck"
on the preceding day, and had walked off from the "rouge-et-noir" table
with four or five hundred pounds.

The weather was still so hot that but few Englishmen were there, and the
play had not as yet begun to run high. There were only two or three,--men
who cannot keep their hands from ruin when ruin is open to them. To them
heat and cold, the dog-star or twenty degrees below zero, make no
difference while the croupier is there, with his rouleaux before him,
capable of turning up the card. They know that the chance is against
them,--one in twenty, let us say,--and that in the long-run one in twenty
is as good as two to one to effect their ruin. For a day they may stand
against one in twenty, as this man had done. For two or three days, for
a week, they may possibly do so; but they know that the doom must come
at last,--as it does come invariably,--and they go on. But our friend, the
Englishman who had won the money, was not such a one as these, at any
rate in regard to Monaco. Yesterday had been his first appearance, and
he had broken ground there with great success. He was an ill-looking
person, poorly clad,--what, in common parlance, we should call seedy. He
had not a scrap of beard on his face, and though swarthy and dark as to
his countenance, was light as to his hair, which hung in quantities down
his back. He was dressed from head to foot in a suit of cross-barred,
light-colored tweed, of which he wore the coat buttoned tight over his
chest, as though to hide some deficiency of linen.

The gentleman was altogether a disreputable-looking personage