valries
that last life-long; there are duels that go on from year to year
of existence, and even to the last leave the question of superiority
undetermined. The game of piquet formed such between these two men. At
every chance meeting in life,--no matter how long the interval or how
brief the passage might be,--they recurred to the old-vexed question,
which fortune seemed to find a pleasure in never deciding definitively.
The fact that each had his own separate theory of the game, would have
given an interest to the encounter; but besides there was now another
circumstance whose import neither were likely to undervalue. Davis had
just paid over to Paul Classon the sum of two hundred napoleons,--the
price of a secret service he was about to perform,--and the sight of
that glowing heap of fresh gold--for there it lay on the corner of the
table--had so stimulated the acquisitiveness of Grog's nature that he
could not resist the temptation to try and regain them. The certainty
that when he should have won them it would only be to restore them to
the loser, for whose expenses on a long Journey they were destined,
detracted nothing from this desire on his part A more unprofitable
debtor than Holy Paul could not be imagined. His very name in a schedule
would reflect discredit on the bankruptcy! But there lay the shining
pieces, fresh from the mint and glittering, and the appeal they made was
to an instinct, not to reason. Was it with the knowledge of this fact
that Paul had left them there instead of putting them up in his pocket?
Had he calculated in his own subtle brain that temptations are
least resistible when they are most tangible? There was that in his
reverence's look which seemed to say as much, and the thoughtless
wantonness of his action as his fingers fiddled with the gold may not
have been entirely without a purpose. They had talked together, and
discussed some knotty matters of business, having concluded which, Davis
proposed cards.

[Illustration: 290]

"Our old combat, I suppose?" said Paul, laughing. "Well, I 'm always
ready."

And down they sat, hour after hour finding them still in the same hard
straggle, fortune swinging with its pendulous stroke from side to side,
as though to elicit the workings of hope and fear in each alternately.
Meanwhile they drank freely, and from time to time arose to eat at the
side-table in that hurried and greedy way that only gamblers eat, as
though vexed at the hanger tha