are set--his eyes fixed on the
table--an enormous sum is risked upon this chance, he has drawn
winning cards, but the dealer may have a "vingt-et-un," and beat him
still. The foreigner's hand is pressed on the table, outspread close
to his cards. All this time Meynell had keenly watched the play; he
had risen from the sofa noiselessly, taken a large carving-fork from
the supper table, and, unobserved by any of the excited players, stood
behind the dealer's chair; his thin lips firmly compressed, and the
fork grasped in his right hand, he leant over the table. This was at
the point of the game when the decisive card was to be turned. Quick
as thought, Meynell drives down the heavy fork through the dealer's
hand, nailing it to the table--there is an ace underneath it; writhing
with pain and shame, the unmasked cheat is hunted from the house.

Meynell at once became the leading man of the regiment; petted by the
colonel on account of his aristocratic connexions, admired by the
older officers for his knowledge of the world, and looked up to by the
younger as the most daring in adventure, the most reckless in
dissipation and expense. He repaid himself for the moderation of the
first night at mess, when he was feeling his ground, by constant
self-indulgence when he knew his power,--while the influence of his
popularity and extraordinary social gifts, drew most of the youths,
already, perhaps, too much disposed for such pleasures, to follow his
example. The regiment had been rather dissipated before, but Meynell's
presence in it was oil to the flame; drinking, waste, and gambling,
became general, ruining the circumstances and constitution of many,
and injuriously affecting the morals of all. Scarcely a year had
passed after this time, when several mere boys, who had entered this
fatal corps with fair prospects and uncorrupted minds, were sent back
to their unhappy parents with blasted characters and broken fortunes.
In these sad catastrophes Meynell found a secret pleasure, strange as
it was diabolical. Though he used all his address to gain followers
and companions in his career, there was something flattering to his
malignant pride when any one broke down in the attempt to keep pace
with him. Sometimes after deep play, in which he was rarely a loser,
he would confer apparent kindnesses on the sufferers, forgive them
their liabilities, and render them pecuniary assistance; but such help
only postponed for a season the ruin th