re-eater told the tale of the sorrow of his youth.

"Gaming was in his blood, David, and we all knew it and protected him
from high play always. We were impoverished gentlemen, who were building
fences and restoring war-devastated lands, and we played in our shabby
club with a minimum stake and a maximum zest for the sport. But that
night we had no control over him. He had been playing in secret with
Peters Brown for weeks and had lost heavily. When we had closed up the
game, he called for the dice and challenged Brown to square their
account. They threw again and again with luck on the same grim side. I
saw him stake first his horses, then his bank account, and lose.

"Hayes Donelson and I started to remonstrate but he silenced us with a
look. Then he drew a hurried transference of his Upper Cumberland
property and put it on the table. They threw again and he lost! Then he
smiled and with a steady hand wrote a conveyance of his home and
plantation, the last things he had, as we knew, and laid that on the
table."

"No, Major," exclaimed David with positive horror in his voice.

"Yes, it was madness, boy," answered the major. "Brown turned his ivories
and we all held our breath as we read his four-three. A mad joy flamed in
Andrew's face and he turned his cup with a steady wrist--and rolled
threes. We none of us looked at Brown, a man who had led another man in
whose veins ran a madness, where in his ran ice, on to his ruin. We
followed Andrew to the street to see him ride away in a gray drizzle to a
gambled home--and a wife and son.

"That morning deeds were drawn, signed, witnessed and delivered to Brown
in his office. Then--then"--the major's thin, powerful old hands grasped
the arm of his chair--"we found him in the twilight under the clump of
cedars that crowned the hill which overlooked Deep-mead Farm--broad acres
of land that the Seviers had had granted them from Virginia--_dead_,
his pistol under his shoulder and a smile on his face. Just so he had
looked as he rode at the head of our crack gray regiment in that
hell-reeking charge at Perryville, and it was such a smile we had
followed into the trenches at Franklin. Stalwart, dashing, joyous Andrew,
how we had all loved him, our man-of-smiles!"

"Can anything ever make it up to you, Major?" asked David softly. As he
spoke he refilled the major's pipe and handed it to him, not appearing to
notice how the lean old hand shook.

"You do, sir," answered the maj