revenge by witnessing the ruin of a young man
who, like many others, was wicked only because he was weak?

In truth, August was a man whose feelings were persistent. His
resentment was--like his love--constant. But his love of justice was
higher and more persistent, and he could not have seen any one fleeced
in this merciless way without taking sides strongly with the victim.
Much less could he see the brother of Julia tempted on to the rocks by
the false lights of villainous wreckers without a great desire to save
him. For the letter of Andrew had ceased now to burn in his pocket. That
other letter--the only one that Julia had been able to send through
Cynthy Ann and Jonas--that other letter, written all over with such
tender extravagances as love feeds on; the thought of that other letter,
which told how beautiful and precious were the invitations to the weary
and heavy-laden, had stilled resentment, and there came instead a keen
desire to save Norman for the sake of Julia and justice. But how to do
it was an embarrassing question--a question that was more than August
could solve. There was a difficulty in the weakness and wrong-headedness
of Norman; a difficulty in Norman's prejudice against Dutchmen in
general and August in particular; a difficulty in the fact that August
was a sort of a fugitive, if not from justice, certainly from injustice.

But when nearly a third of Norman's employer's money had gone into the
gamblers' heap, and when August began to understand that it was another
man's money that Norman was losing, and that the victim was threatened
by no half-way ruin, he determined to do something, even at the risk of
making himself known to Norman and to Parkins--was he Humphreys in
disguise?--and at the risk of arrest for house-breaking. August acted
with his eyes open to all the perils from gamblers' pistols and
gamblers' malice; and after he had started to interfere, the mud-clerk
called him back, and said, in his half-indifferent way:

"Looky here, Gus, don't be a blamed fool. That's a purty little game.
That greeny's got to learn to let blacklegs alone, and he don't look
like one that'll take advice. Let him scorch a little; it'll do him
good. It's healthy for young men. That's the reason the old man don't
forbid it, I s'pose. And these fellows carry good shooting-irons with
hair-triggers, and I declare I don't want to be bothered writing home to
your mother, and explaining to her that you got killed