At last the appointed hour came. A firm conviction had taken possession of Tom’s mind, that he was to draw the prize of fifty thousand dollars. He did not seem to consider that there were twenty thousand tickets, and that his chance of getting it was only one in twenty thousand. To a deluded mind, such an obstacle is nothing; one chance in twenty thousand is just as good as certainty. When the drawing took place, the office was thronged with a crowd of people, most of them wretched in the extreme. There were old men, tottering upon the verge of the grave; there were haggard women, evidently starving for want of the money they had invested in the lottery; there were young persons, of both sexes, apparently sunk in vice and wasted with poverty; there were the sick and emaciated, mingled with the strong and the reckless. All anticipated with hope and expectation,――and yet all, or nearly all, were destined to go away with disappointment and sickness of heart. Tom got close to the revolving wheel, and, with his ticket in his hand, watched the numbers as they were declared. Several times his heart beat violently, as a number came out near his own. The drawing continued for more than two hours, and his hopes began to fly, as he perceived that the prizes were nearly all out. At last his own number, which was 777, was announced, and immediately after, it appeared that it had drawn the prize of 50,000 dollars!!! Tom Trudge was in general a pretty stable-minded man, but for a moment his eyes grew dim and his brain reeled. A strange variety of images glided in confusion before his fancy, among which, his wife, with a _yaller_ damask gown and a fine fan, were conspicuous. Finding it necessary to have air, he left the crowd, and went into the street. For some time he could hardly tell where or what he was; but at last his faculties rallied, and, coming fully to himself, he began to consider what was to be done. He made inquiries at the office, and found that he could cash his prize at once by paying 5000 dollars discount;――this he did, and immediately found himself in the possession of the sum of forty-five thousand dollars,――an immense sum in those days, especially for a pedlar, who had seldom before had fifty dollars in hand at a time. Though he was anxious to go home and communicate his good fortune to his wife, he did not forget her injunction. He went forthwith and purchased a magnificent changeable silk dress, of yellow and purple, upon which was a representation of a bathing goddess in figures of gold. He also purchased a fan, on one side of which was a Venus, and on the other a Cupid, and started for home. Stopping at every tavern on the road, he drank liberally, and by the time he reached his cottage, his brain was not a little muddled.