ss and reserve in it than their meeting at tea-time. No reference
was made to the previous evening, nor to the fact of his having
remained out to a late hour.

It was the intention of Ellis, on leaving his house after breakfast, to
repair to his store and make some preliminary arrangements for the day
before hunting up Carlton; but on his way thither, his appetite
constrained him to enter a certain drinking-house just for a single
glass of brandy to give his nerves their proper tension.

"Ah! how are you, my boy?" exclaimed Carlton, who was there before him,
advancing as he spoke, and offering his hand in his usual frank way.

"Glad to meet you!" returned Ellis. "Just the man I wished to see. Take
a drink?"

"I don't care if I do."

And the two men moved up to the bar. When they turned away, Carlton
drew his arm familiarly within that of Ellis, and bending close to his
ear, said--"You wish to take up your due-bills, I presume?

"You guess my wishes precisely," was the answer.

"Well, I shall be pleased to have you cancel them. Are you prepared to
do it this morning?"

"I am--in the way they were created."

A gleam of satisfaction lit up the gambler's face, which was partly
turned from Ellis; but he shrugged his shoulders, and said, in an
altered voice--"I'm most afraid to try you again."

"We're pretty well matched, I know," said the victim. "If you decline,
of course the matter ends."

"I never like to be bantered," returned Carlton. "If a man were to dare
me to jump from the housetop, it would be as much as I could do to
restrain myself."

"I've got three hundred in my pocket," said Ellis, "and I'm prepared to
see the last dollar of it."

"Good stuff in you, my boy!" and Carlton laid his hand upon his
shoulder in a familiar way. "It would hardly be fair not to give you a
chance to get back where you were. So here's for you, win or lose, sink
or swim."

And the two men left the tavern together. We need not follow them, nor
describe the contest that ensued. The result has already been
anticipated by the reader. A few hours sufficed to strip Ellis of his
three hundred dollars, and increase his debts to the gambler nearly
double the former amount.

CHAPTER XV.

MRS. ELLIS knew, by the appearance of her husband, that he had not been
drinking on the night previous, late as he had remained away. This took
a weight from her feelings, and relieved her mind from self-upbraidings
that would have hau