hoped in such a cause?
Tell me that! Who would not have hoped as I did?'

'When did you first begin this mad career?' asked Quilp, his taunting
inclination subdued, for a moment, by the old man's grief and wildness.

'When did I first begin?' he rejoined, passing his hand across his
brow. 'When was it, that I first began? When should it be, but when I
began to think how little I had saved, how long a time it took to save
at all, how short a time I might have at my age to live, and how she
would be left to the rough mercies of the world, with barely enough to
keep her from the sorrows that wait on poverty; then it was that I
began to think about it.'

'After you first came to me to get your precious grandson packed off to
sea?' said Quilp.

'Shortly after that,' replied the old man. 'I thought of it a long
time, and had it in my sleep for months. Then I began. I found no
pleasure in it, I expected none. What has it ever brought me but
anxious days and sleepless nights; but loss of health and peace of
mind, and gain of feebleness and sorrow!'

'You lost what money you had laid by, first, and then came to me.
While I thought you were making your fortune (as you said you were) you
were making yourself a beggar, eh? Dear me! And so it comes to pass
that I hold every security you could scrape together, and a bill of
sale upon the--upon the stock and property,' said Quilp standing up and
looking about him, as if to assure himself that none of it had been
taken away. 'But did you never win?'

'Never!' groaned the old man. 'Never won back my loss!'

'I thought,' sneered the dwarf, 'that if a man played long enough he
was sure to win at last, or, at the worst, not to come off a loser.'

'And so he is,' cried the old man, suddenly rousing himself from his
state of despondency, and lashed into the most violent excitement, 'so
he is; I have felt that from the first, I have always known it, I've
seen it, I never felt it half so strongly as I feel it now. Quilp, I
have dreamed, three nights, of winning the same large sum, I never
could dream that dream before, though I have often tried. Do not
desert me, now I have this chance. I have no resource but you, give me
some help, let me try this one last hope.'

The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

'See, Quilp, good tender-hearted Quilp,' said the old man, drawing some
scraps of paper from his pocket with a trembling hand, and clasping the
dwarf's