There was not even the pretense of much money among them. Probably a few gold pieces was the most any of them had. When one of them had made something at this sort of small private game, he would try his luck at one of the more public tables, I presume. As the game went on and they grew more excited, they increased their stakes a little. Still they seemed content to go on for a little. Thomas and Molken were partners, and still they won. Gradually the points were increased, and betting began. Thomas began to lose and lose, of course, more rapidly than he had won. He had had two or three pounds in his pocket when he began, but all went now--the last of it in a bet on the odd trick. He borrowed of Molken--lost; borrowed and lost, still sipping his gin and water, till Molken declared he had himself lost everything. Thomas laid his watch on the table, for himself and Molken--it was not of great value--a gift of his mother only. He lost it. What was to be done? He had one thing left--a ring of some value which Lucy had given him to wear for her. It had belonged to her mother. He pulled it off his finger, showed that it was a rose diamond, and laid it on the table. It followed the rest. He rose, caught up his hat, and, as so many thousands of gamblers have done before, rushed out into the rain and the darkness. Through all the fumes of the gin which had begun to render "the receipt of reason a limbeck only," the thought gleamed upon his cloudy mind that he ought to have received his quarter's salary that very day. If he had had that, what might he not have done? It was his, and yet he could not have it. His mind was all in a confused despair, ready to grasp at anything that offered him a chance of winning back what he had lost. If he had gone home and told his father--but he was not capable of reasoning out anything. Lucy's ring was his chief misery: so much must be said for him. Something--he did not know what--drove him toward Guild Court. I believe, though in his after reflections he could not identify the impulse, that it was the same which he obeyed at last. Before he knew where he was going, he was at Mrs. Boxall's door. He found it ajar, and walked up the stair to the sitting-room. That door too was open, and there was no one there. But he saw at a glance, from the box on the floor and the shawl on the table, that Lucy had returned, and he supposed that her grandmother had gone up stairs with her. The same moment his eyes sought the wall, and there hung two keys. They were the keys of the door of communication and of the safe.