“The task has been an irksome one; the trial absolutely painful. But I should have been ashamed, once commencing the undertaking, not to have succeeded. He, too, was not impregnable. I found out his particular weakness. He was a vain man; vain of his bearing, which he deemed aristocratic; his person, which he considered very fine. I played with these vanities. Failing to excite him on the subject of the game, I made HIMSELF my subject. I chattered with him freely; so as to prompt him to fancy that I was praising his style, air, appearance; anon, by some queer jibe, making him half suspicious that I was quizzing him. My frequent laughter, judiciously disposed, helped this effect; and, to a certain extent, I succeeded. He became nervous, and was excited, though you may not have seen it. I saw it in the change of his complexion, which became suddenly quite bilious. I found, too, that he could only speak with some effort, when, if you remember, before we began to play, his tongue, though deliberate, worked pat enough. I felt my power over him momently increase; and I sometimes won where he did not wish it. I do verily believe that he ceased to see the very marks which he himself had made upon the cards. Nervous agitation, on most persons, produces a degree of blindness quite as certainly as it affects the speech. Well, you saw the condition of our funds when you re-appeared. I had determined to bring the business to a close. I had marked the dice, actually before his face, while we took a spell of rest over a bottle of porter. I had scratched them quietly with a pin which I carried in my sleeve for that purpose, while he busied himself with a fidgety shuffling of the cards. My leg, thrown over one angle of the table, partly covered my operations, and I worked upon the dice in my lap. You may suppose the etching was bad enough, doing precious little credit to the art of engraving in our country. But the thing was thoroughly done, for I had worked myself into a rigorous sort of philosophic desperation which made me as cool as a cucumber. To seem to empty the contents of the wallet into my lap was my next object, and this I succeeded in, without his suspecting that my movement was a sham only. The purse thus made up, I emphatically told him was all I had--this was the truth--and then came the crisis. His trick was to be employed now or never. It was employed, but he had become so nervous, that I caught a sufficient glimpse of his proceedings. I saw the slight o'hand movement which he attempted, and--you know the rest. I regard the money as honestly mine--so far as good morals may recognise the honesty of getting money by gambling;--and thinking so, my dear Clifford, I have no scruple in begging you to share it with me. It is only fit that you, who furnished all the capital--you see I say nothing of the wallet which should, however, be priceless in our eyes--should derive at least a moiety of the profit. It is quite as much yours as mine.