anything, Scarborough, that ought to be taken up in that
way."

"Hang your Scarborough! When one gentleman talks another about mistakes
he means something." Then he smashed down his hat upon his head and left
the room.

Vignolles emptied the bottle of champagne, in which one glass was left,
and sat himself down with the document in his hand. "Just the same
fellow," he said to himself; "overbearing, reckless, pig-headed, and a
bully. He'd lose the Bank of England if he had it. But then he don't
pay! He hasn't a scruple about that. If I lose I have to pay. By Jove,
yes! Never didn't pay a shilling I lost in my life! It's deuced hard,
when a fellow is on the square like that, to make two ends meet when he
comes across defaulters. Those fellows should be hung. They're the very
scum of the earth. Talk of welchers! They're worse than any welcher.
Welcher is a thing you needn't have to do with if you're careful. But
when a fellow turns round upon you as a defaulter at cards, there is no
getting rid of him. Where the play is all straightforward and honorable,
a defaulter when he shows himself ought to be well-nigh murdered."

Such were Captain Vignolles's plaints to himself, as he sat there
looking at the suspicious document which Mountjoy had left in his hands.
To him it was a fact that he had been cruelly used in having such a bit
of paper thrust upon him instead of being paid by a check which on the
morning would be honored. And as he thought of his own career; his
ready-money payments; his obedience to certain rules of the game,--rules,
I mean, against cheating; as he thought of his hands, which in his own
estimation were beautifully clean; his diligence in his profession,
which to him was honorable; his hard work; his late hours; his devotion
to a task which was often tedious; his many periods of heart-rending
loss, which when they occurred would drive him nearly mad; his small
customary gains; his inability to put by anything for old age; of the
narrow edge by which he himself was occasionally divided from
defalcation, he spoke to himself of himself as of an honest,
hard-working professional man upon whom the world was peculiarly hard.

But Major Moody went home to his wife quite content with the thirty
pounds which he had won.

CHAPTER XLIII.

MR. PROSPER IS VISITED BY HIS LAWYERS.

Mr. Prosper had not been in good spirits at the time at which Mountjoy
Scarborough had visited him. He had received some ti