Even while the thought was in my mind a hand out of the night fell on my shoulder from behind. I turned with a start, and found myself face to face with the Scotchman Balmerino. "Whither away, Kenneth?" he asked. I laughed bitterly. "What does it matter? A broken gambler--a ruined dicer-- What is there left for him?" The Scotch Lord linked an arm through mine. I had liefer have been alone, but I could scarce tell him so. He had been a friend of my father and had done his best to save me from my folly. "There is much left. All is not lost. I have a word to say to your father's son." "What use!" I cried rudely. "You would lock the stable after the horse is stolen." "Say rather that I would put you in the way of getting another horse," he answered gravely. So gravely that I looked at him twice before I answered: "And I would be blithe to find a way, for split me! as things look now I must either pistol myself or take to the road and pistol others," I told him gloomily. "There are worse things than to lose one's wealth----" "I hear you say it, but begad! I do not know them," I answered with a touch of anger at his calmness. "----When the way is open to regain all one has lost and more," he finished, unheeding my interruption. "Well, this way you speak of," I cried impatiently. "Where is it?" He looked at me searchingly, as one who would know the inmost secrets of my soul. Under a guttering street light he stopped me and read my face line by line. I dare swear he found there a recklessness to match his own and perhaps some trace of the loyalty for which he looked. Presently he said, as the paving stones echoed to our tread:-- "You have your father's face, Kenn. I mind him a lad just like you when we went out together in the '15 for the King. Those were great days--great days. I wonder----" His unfinished sentence tailed out into a meditative silence. His voice and eyes told of a mind reminiscent of the past and perhaps dreamful of the future. Yet awhile, and he snatched himself back into the present. "Six hours ago I should not have proposed this desperate remedy for your ills. You had a stake in the country then, but now you are as poor in this world's gear as Arthur Elphinstone himself. When one has naught but life at stake he will take greater risks. I have a man's game to play. Are you for it, lad?" I hesitated, a prophetic divination in my mind that I stood in a mist at the parting of life's ways. "You have thrown all to-night--and lost. I offer you another cut at Fortune's cards. You might even turn a king."