not make out," replied the second speaker,
who, as the reader has probably discovered, was none other than
Cumberland; "it's easy enough for you to lay it all to my mismanagement,
Captain Spicer, but I tell you it is no such thing; did I not
accommodate my play to his, always appearing to win by some accident, so
that the fool actually believed himself the better player, while he was
losing from twenty to thirty pounds a day? Didn't I excite him, and lead
him on by a mixture of flattery and defiance, so that he often fancied
he was persuading me to play against my will, and was so ready to bet
that I might have won three times what I have of him, if you had not
advised me to go on quietly, and by degrees? Did not you refuse when I
wished you to take him in hand yourself, because you said I understood
him best, and managed him admirably? No, I believe that detestable young
Fairlegh is at the bottom of it: I observed him watching me with that
calm, steadfast glance of his, that I hated him for from the first
moment I saw him; I felt certain some mischief would arise from it."

"Yes!" replied Spicer, "that was your fault too: why did you let the
other bring him; every fool knows that lookers-on see most of the game."

"I was afraid to say much against it, lest Oaklands should suspect
anything," rejoined Cumberland; "but I wish to Heaven I had now; I might
have been sure no good would come from it--that boy is my evil genius."

"I have no time for talking about geniuses, and such confounded stuff,"
observed Spicer, angrily, "so now to business, Mr. Cumberland: you are
aware you owe me two hundred pounds, I presume?"

Cumberland grumbled out an unwilling assent, to which he appended a
muttered remark not exactly calculated to enhance the Captain's future
comfort.

"Like a good-natured fool," continued Spicer, "I agreed to wait for my
money till you had done what you could with this Oaklands."

"For which forbearance you were to receive fifty ~83~~pounds extra,
besides anything you could make out of him by private bets," put in
Cumberland.

"Of course I was not going to wait all that time for my money for
nothing," was the reply; "you have only as yet paid me fifty pounds, you
tell me you can't persuade Oaklands to play again, so there's nothing
more to be got from that quarter, consequently nothing more to wait for.
I must trouble you, therefore, to pay me the two hundred pounds at
once; for, to be plain with you, it