us. The native animal must
be vigorous in the human being, when the moral safeguards are daringly
overleapt. Jasper was not alone, but with an acquaintance he had made
at the dinner, and whom he invited to his inn to breakfast; they were
walking familiarly arm-in-arm. Very unlike the brilliant Losely,--a
young man under thirty, who seemed to have washed out all the colours of
youth in dirty water. His eyes dull, their whites yellow; his complexion
sodden. His form was thickset and heavy; his features pug, with a cross
of the bull-dog. In dress, a specimen of the flash style of sporting
man, as exhibited on the Turf, or more often perhaps in the Ring;
Belcher neckcloth, with an immense pin representing a jockey at full
gallop; cut-away coat, corduroy breeches, and boots with tops of a
chalky white. Yet, withal, not the air and walk of a genuine born and
bred sporting man, even of the vulgar order. Something about him
which reveals the pretender. A would-be hawk with a pigeon's liver,--a
would-be sportsman with a Cockney's nurture.

Samuel Adolphus Poole is an orphan of respectable connections. His
future expectations chiefly rest on an uncle from whom, as godfather, he
takes the loathed name of Samuel. He prefers to sign himself Adolphus;
he is popularly styled Dolly. For his present existence he relies
ostensibly on his salary as an assistant in the house of a London
tradesman in a fashionable way of business. Mr. Latham, his employer,
has made a considerable fortune, less by his shop than by discounting
the bills of his customers, or of other borrowers whom the loan draws
into the net of the custom. Mr. Latham connives at the sporting tastes
of Dolly Poole. Dolly has often thus been enabled to pick up useful
pieces of information as to the names and repute of such denizens of the
sporting world as might apply to Mr. Latham for temporary accommodation.
Dolly Poole has many sporting friends; he has also many debts. He has
been a dupe, he is now a rogue; but he wants decision of character to
put into practice many valuable ideas that his experience of dupe and
his development into rogue suggest to his ambition. Still, however,
now and then, wherever a shabby trick can be safely done, he is what
he calls "lucky." He has conceived a prodigious admiration for Jasper
Losely, one cause for which will be explained in the dialogue about
to be recorded; another cause for which is analogous to that loving
submission with which som