and came forward into the lantern light. It was the reddleman
approaching.

8--A New Force Disturbs the Current

Wildeve stared. Venn looked coolly towards Wildeve, and, without a word
being spoken, he deliberately sat himself down where Christian had been
seated, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a sovereign, and laid
it on the stone.

"You have been watching us from behind that bush?" said Wildeve.

The reddleman nodded. "Down with your stake," he said. "Or haven't you
pluck enough to go on?"

Now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much more easily begun
with full pockets than left off with the same; and though Wildeve in
a cooler temper might have prudently declined this invitation, the
excitement of his recent success carried him completely away. He placed
one of the guineas on a slab beside the reddleman's sovereign. "Mine is
a guinea," he said.

"A guinea that's not your own," said Venn sarcastically.

"It is my own," answered Wildeve haughtily. "It is my wife's, and what
is hers is mine."

"Very well; let's make a beginning." He shook the box, and threw eight,
ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to twenty-seven.

This encouraged Wildeve. He took the box; and his three casts amounted
to forty-five.

Down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against his first one
which Wildeve laid. This time Wildeve threw fifty-one points, but no
pair. The reddleman looked grim, threw a raffle of aces, and pocketed
the stakes.

"Here you are again," said Wildeve contemptuously. "Double the stakes."
He laid two of Thomasin's guineas, and the reddleman his two pounds.
Venn won again. New stakes were laid on the stone, and the gamblers
proceeded as before.

Wildeve was a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginning
to tell upon his temper. He writhed, fumed, shifted his seat, and the
beating of his heart was almost audible. Venn sat with lips impassively
closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles; he scarcely
appeared to breathe. He might have been an Arab, or an automaton; he
would have been like a red sandstone statue but for the motion of his
arm with the dice-box.

The game fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in favour of the other,
without any great advantage on the side of either. Nearly twenty minutes
were passed thus. The light of the candle had by this time attracted
heath-flies, moths, and other winged creatures of night, which floated
round the