of the fragment of his property; but mine was of the higher order, and I determined on revenge.  I had my revenge, and saw my winners ruined.  They had their consolation, and at the close of a six months’ campaign saw me walk into the streets a beggar.  I grew desperate, and was voted dangerous.  I realized the charge by fastening on a noble lord who had been one of the most adroit in pigeoning me.  His life was “too valuable to his country,” or himself, to allow him to meet a fellow whose life was of no use to any living thing; and through patriotism and the fear of being shot, he kept out of my way.  I raged, threatened to post his lordship, and was in the very act of writing out the form of the placard declaring the noble heir of the noble house of ——­ a cheat and a scoundrel, when by the twopenny-post I received a notice from the Horse Guards that I was on that day to appear in the Gazette as an ensign in his majesty’s ——­ regiment, then serving in the Peninsula, with orders to join without delay.  This was enough from his lordship, and was certainly better for me than running the chance of damages in the King’s Bench, for provoking his majesty’s subjects to a breach of the peace.

I was gazetted, tried on my uniform before the mirror, entirely approved of my appearance, and wrote my last letter to my last flirt.  The Portsmouth mail was to start at eight.  I had an hour to spare, and sallied into the street.  I met an honest-faced old acquaintance as much at a loss as myself to slay the hour.  We were driven by a shower into shelter.  The rattle of dice was heard within a green-baize-covered door.  We could not stay for ever shivering on the outside.  Fortune favoured me; in half an hour I was master of a thousand pounds; it would have been obvious folly and ingratitude to check the torrent of success for the paltry prospects of an ensigncy.  I played on, and won on.  The clock struck eight.  I will own that I trembled as the first sound caught my ear.  But whether nervous or not, from that instant the torrent was checked.  The loss and gain became alternate.  Wine was brought in; I played in furious scorn of consequences.  I saw the board covered with gold.  I swept it into my stake; I soon saw my stake reduced to nothing.  My eyes were dazzled, my hand shook, my brain was on fire, I sang, danced, roared with exultation or despair.  How the night closed, I know not; but I found myself at last in a narrow room, surrounded with squalidness, its only light from a high-barred window, and its only furniture the wooden tressel on which I lay, fierce, weary, and feverish, as if I lay on the rack.  From this couch of the desperate, I was carried into the presence of a magistrate, to hear that in the melee of the night before, I had in my rage charged my honest-faced acquaintance with palpable cheating; and having made good my charge by shewing the loaded dice in his hand, had knocked him down with a violence that made his recovery more than doubtful.