p! Thou hast confessed it all,--
The means, the end, the motive,--laid all Bare!
O, thou poor knave!--and that convenient friend
Who swears or unswears, speaks or holds his peace,
At thy command,--you have conspired together!"

LOVELL.

On board the Chalmetta, Harwell discovered an old acquaintance in the
person of a notorious gambler,--a class of persons who congregate on
Mississippi steamers, and practise their arts upon the unwary traveller.
This person, who went by the name of Vernon, was well known at the faro
and roulette boards in New Orleans. He was an accomplished swindler. In
the winter season, when the city is crowded with the elite of the state,
and with strangers from all parts of the Union, Vernon found abundant
exercise for his professional ability at the hells of the city, in the
employment of their proprietors, acting the part of banker, or anything
else that offered him the means of gratifying his luxurious habits. A
twinge of conscience never prevented him from adopting any means of
emptying the pockets of his victims, even without the formality of dice
or cards.

In the summer season he beguiled his time on the river, or migrated with
the fashionables to Pascagoula, or a more northern watering-place,--in
fine, to any sphere which afforded him a theatre for the exercise of his
talents as a blackleg. Wherever he was, he never passed by an
opportunity to obtain possession of his neighbor's valuables. If the
monied man would accept a hand at euchre or poker, why, he was so much
the easier cleaned out; if not, false keys, pick-locks, or
sleight-of-hand, soon relieved the unfortunate victim of his superfluous
possessions.

Early in his career of fashionable dissipation, Maxwell had made the
acquaintance of this notorious individual. Indeed, he had sufficient
cause to remember him, for he had made a deep inroad into his patrimony.
Maxwell was too great a rascal himself to be long duped by a greater
one. A kind of business intimacy had grown up between them, and
continued to exist at the time of our story. This connection was not,
however, publicly acknowledged by Maxwell; it would have been the ruin
of his fine prospects: but he used him whenever a scheme of profit or
revenge required an unscrupulous confederate. Yet this Vernon was by no
means a dependent creature of Maxwell's, for he was bold, reckless, and
independent to the last degr