He was one of the hundred thousand chevaliers who hail the advent of war as something which will hide their nothingness. "I knew it," said Auburn Risque, at length, pinching the ball between his hard palms as if it were the creature of his will. "My system is good; yours do not validate themselves. You are novices at gambling; I am an old blackleg." It was as he had said; the method of betting which he proposed had seemed to be successful. He staked upon colors; never upon numbers; and alternated from white to black after a fixed, undeviating routine. Less by experiment than by faith, the others gave up their own theories to adopt his own. They resolved to collect every available sou, and, confiding it to the keeping of Mr. Risque, send him to Germany, that he might beggar the bankers, and so restore the Southern Colony to its wonted prosperity. Hugenot delivered a short address, wishing "the cause" good luck, but declining to subscribe anything. He did not doubt the safety of "the system" of course, but had an hereditary antipathy to gaming. The precepts of all his ancestry were against it. Poor Lees followed in a broken way, indicating sundry books, a guitar, two pairs of old boots, and a canary bird, as the relics of his fortune. These, Andy Plade, who possessed nothing, but thought he might borrow a trifle, volunteered to dispose of, and Freckle, a Missourian, who was tolerated in the colony only because he could be plucked, asserted enthusiastically, and amid great sensation, that he yet had three hundred francs at the banker's, his entire capital, all of which he meant to devote to the most reliable project in the world. At this episode, Pisgah, whose misfortunes had quite shattered his nerves, proposed to drink at Freckle's expense to the success of the system, and Hugenot was prevailed upon to advance twenty-one sous, while Simp took the order to the adjacent _marchand du vin_. When they had all filled, Hugenot, looking upon himself in the light of a benefactor, considered it necessary to do something. "Boys," he said, wiping his eves with the lining of a kid glove, "will you esteem it unnatural, that a Suth Kurlinian, who sat--at an early age, it is true--at the feet of the great Kulhoon, should lift up his voice and weep in this day of ou-ah calamity?" (Sensation, aggrieved by the sobs of Freckle, who, unused to spirits and greatly affected--chokes.)