nd bullet as his
last assured resource; but a certain amount of good-fortune had awaited
him,--enough to save him from having recourse to their aid. His brother
had supplied him with small sums of money, and from time to time a
morsel of good luck had enabled him to gamble, not to his heart's
content, but still in some manner so as to make his life bearable. But
now he was back in his own country, and he could gamble not at all, and
hardly even see those old companions with whom he had lived. It was not
only for the card-tables that he sighed, but for the companions of the
card-table. And though he knew that he had been scratched out from the
lists of all clubs as a dishonest man, he knew also, or thought that he
knew, that he had been as honest as the best of those companions. As
long as he could by any possibility raise money he had paid it away,
and by no false trick had he ever endeavored to get it back again.

Had a little time been allowed him all would have been paid; and all had
been paid. He knew that by the rules of such institutions time could not
be granted; but still he did not feel himself to have been a dishonest
man. Yet he had been so disgraced that he could hardly venture to walk
about the streets of London in the daylight. And then there came upon
him, when he found himself alone at Tretton, an irrepressible desire for
gambling. It was as though his throat were parched with an implacable
thirst. He walked about ever meditating certain fortunate turns of the
cards; and when he had worked himself up to some realization of his old
excitement he would remember that it was all a vain and empty bubble. He
had money in his pocket, and could rush up to London if he would, and if
he did so he could, no doubt, find some coarse hell at which he could
stake it till it would be all gone; but the gates of the A---- and the
B---- and the C---- would be closed against him; and he would then be
driven to feel that he had indeed fallen into the nethermost pit. Were
he once to play at such places as his mind painted to him he could never
play at any other; and yet when the day drew nigh on which he was to go
to London, on his way to Buston, he did bethink himself where these
places were to be found. His throat was parched, and the thirst upon him
was extreme. Cards were the weapons he had used. He had played ecarte,
piquet, whist, and baccarat, with an occasional night of some foolish
game such as cribbage or vingt-et-un