purpose he has not intimated to any one, as far as I can learn."

"What do you think of it?"

"Just this. He and Green have been hunting together in times past;
but the professed gambler's instincts are too strong to let him
spare even his friend in evil. They have commenced playing one
against the other."

"Ah! you think so?"

"I do; and if I conjecture rightly, Simon Slade will be a poorer
man, in a year from this time, than he is now."

Here our conversation was interrupted. Some one asked my talkative
friend to go and take a drink, and he, nothing loath, left me
without ceremony.

Very differently served was the supper I partook of on that
evening, from the one set before me on the occasion of my first
visit to the "Sickle and Sheaf." The table-cloth was not merely
soiled, but offensively dirty; the plates, cups, and saucers,
dingy and sticky; the knives and forks unpolished; and the food of
a character to satisfy the appetite with a very few mouthfuls. Two
greasy-looking Irish girls waited on the table, at which neither
landlord nor landlady presided. I was really hungry when the
supper-bell rang; but the craving of my stomach soon ceased in the
atmosphere of the dining-room, and I was the first to leave the
table.