pawned the garments entrusted to her care, that she might venture
upon a "row" of which she had dreamed, comes shrinking down with a pale,
frightened face, and the bitterness of despair in her heart. She has
lost. What then? She has no friend from whom she can borrow enough money
to redeem the clothing, and if it is not taken home she may be arrested
as a thief and sent to prison. She goes away, and temptation lies close
at her feet. It is her extremity and the evil one's opportunity. So far
she has kept herself pure, but the disgrace of a public prosecution and
a sentence to prison are terrible things to contemplate. She is in peril
of her soul. God help her!

Who is this dressed in rusty black garments and closely veiled, who
comes up from the restaurant, one of the convenient and unsuspected
entrances to this robber's den?--for a "policy-shop" is simply a robbery
shop, and is so regarded by the law, which sets a penalty upon the
"writer" and the "backer" as upon other criminals. But who is this
veiled woman in faded mourning garments who comes gliding as noiselessly
as a ghost out from one of the rooms of the restaurant, and along the
narrow entry leading to the stairway, now so thronged with visitors?
Every day she comes and goes, no one seeing her face, and every day,
with rare exceptions, her step is slower and her form visibly more
shrunken when she goes out than when she comes in. She is a broken-down
gentlewoman, the widow of an officer, who left her at his death a
moderate fortune, and quite sufficient for the comfortable maintenance
of herself and two nearly grown-up daughters. But she had lived at
the South, and there acquired a taste for lottery gambling. During her
husband's lifetime she wasted considerable money in lottery tickets,
once or twice drawing small prizes, but like all lottery dupes spending
a hundred dollars for one gained. The thing had become a sort of mania
with her. She thought so much of prizes and drawn numbers through the
day that she dreamed of them all night. She had a memorandum-book in
which were all the combinations she had ever heard of as taking prizes.
It contained page after page of lucky numbers and fancy "rows," and was
oftener in her hand than any other book.

There being no public sale of lottery tickets in Northern cities, this
weak and infatuated woman found out where some of the "policy-shops"
were kept, and instead of buying tickets, as before, risked her money on
num