at if the
rich one did know it he would return the money? I think not. The
history of gambling does not point to many, if any, such cases of
self-sacrifice. The truth is that selfishness in its meanest form is at
the bottom of all gambling, though many gamblers may not quite see the
fact. I want your money. I am too proud to ask it. I dare not demand
it. I cannot cajole you out of it. I will not rob you. You are
precisely in the same mind that I am. Come, let us resort to a trick,
let us make an arrangement whereby one of us at least shall gain his
sneaking, nefarious, unjust end, and we will, anyhow, have the
excitement of leaving to chance which of us is to be the lucky man.
Chance and luck! Dick Sharp, there is no such condition as chance or
luck. It is as surely fixed in the mind of God which gambler is to gain
and which to lose as it is that the morrow shall follow to-day."

"My dear Blunt, I had no idea you were such a fatalist," said Sharp in
surprise.

"I am not a fatalist in the sense you mean," returned his friend.
"Everything has been fixed from the beginning."

"Is not that fatalism of the most pronounced nature, Tom?"

"You don't seem to see that, among other fixtures, it was fixed that
free-will should be given to man, and with it the right as well as the
power to fix many things for himself, also the responsibility. Without
free-will we could have had no responsibility. The mere fact that God
of course _knew_ what each man would will, did not alter the fixed
arrangement that man has been left perfectly free to will as he pleases.
I do not say that man is free to _do_ as he pleases. Sometimes the
doing is permitted; sometimes it is interfered with--never the willing.
That is always and for ever free. Gamblers use their free-wills, often
to their own great damage and ruin; just as good men use their
free-wills to their great advantage and happiness. In both cases they
make free use of the free-wills that have been bestowed on them."

"Then I suppose that you consider gambling, even to the smallest extent,
to be sin?"

"I do."

"Under which of the ten commandments does it fall?"

"`Thou shalt not covet.'"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

TWO REMARKABLE DREAMS.

Some natures are better than others. There can be no question about
that. Some dispositions are born moderately sweet, others are born
slightly sour. If you doubt the fact, reader, go study Nature, or get
you to an argumentat