ay and the shadow of
ruin lay heavy upon him, he happened to be present at a reception
where card play was going on and considerable sums were staked.

A vacancy at one of the tables could not be filled, and, in spite of
his weak protest of unwillingness, Prince Chechevinski was pressed
into service. He won for the first few rounds, and then began to lose,
till the amount of his losses far exceeded the slender remainder of
his capital. A chance occurred where, by the simple expedient of
neutralizing the cut, mere child's play for one so skilled in
conjuring, he was able to turn the scale in his favor, winning back in
a single game all that he had already lost. He had hesitated for a
moment, feeling the abyss yawning beneath him; then he had falsed,
made the pass, and won the game. That night he swore to himself that
he would never cheat again, never again be tempted to dishonor his
birth; and he kept his oath till his next run of bad luck, when he
once more neutralized the cut and turned the "luck" in his direction.

The result was almost a certainty from the outset, Prince Chechevinski
became a habitual card sharper.

For a long time fortune favored him. His mother's reputation for
wealth, the knowledge that he was her sole heir, the high position of
the family, shielded him from suspicion. Then came the thunderclap. He
was caught in the act of "dealing a second" in the English Club, and
driven from the club as a blackleg. Other reverses followed: a public
refusal on the part of an officer to play cards with him, followed by
a like refusal to give him satisfaction in a duel; a second occasion
in which he was caught redhanded; a criminal trial; six years in
Siberia. After two years he escaped by way of the Chinese frontier,
and months after returned to Europe. For two years he practiced his
skill at Constantinople. Then he made his way to Buda-Pesth, then to
Vienna. While in the dual monarchy, he had come across a
poverty-stricken Magyar noble, named Kallash, whom he had sheltered in
a fit of generous pity, and who had died in his room at the Golden
Eagle Inn. Prince Chechevinski, who had already borne many aliases,
showed his grief at the old Magyar's death by adopting his name and
title; hence it was that he presented himself in St. Petersburg in the
season of 1858 under the high-sounding title of Count Kallash.

An extraordinary coincidence, already described, had brought him face
to face with his sister Anna, wh