“I see, Cave,” said Sewell, with a quiet smile,--“I see you want to do me a favor,--so you shall. I am obliged to own that I am an exception to the theory I have just now enunciated. I staked a thousand pounds, and I had _not_ the money in my pocket. Wait a moment,--don't interrupt me. I had not the money in gold or bank-notes, but I had it here”--and he touched the papers before him--“in a form equally solvent, only that it required that he who won the money should be not a mere acquaintance, but a friend,--a friend to whom I could speak with freedom and in confidence. This,” said he, “is a bond for twelve hundred pounds, given by my wife's guardian in satisfaction of a loan once made to him; he was a man of large fortune, which he squandered away recklessly, leaving but a small estate, which he could neither sell nor alienate. Upon this property this is a mortgage. As an old friend of my father-in-law,--a very unworthy one, by the way,--I could of course not press him for the interest, and, as you will see, it has never been paid; and there is now a balance of some hundred pounds additional against him. Of this I could not speak, for another reason,--we are not without the hope of inheriting something by him, and to allude to this matter would be ruinous. Keep this, then. I insist upon it. I declare to you, if you refuse, I will sell it to-morrow to the first moneylender I can find, and send you my debt in hard cash. I 've been a play-man all my life, but never a defaulter.” There was a tone of proud indignation in the way he spoke that awed Cave to silence; for in good truth he was treating of themes of which he knew nothing whatever: and of the sort of influences which swayed gamblers, of the rules that guided and the conventionalities that bound them, he was profoundly ignorant. “You 'll not get your money, Cave,” resumed Sewell, “till this old fellow dies; but you will be paid at last,--of that I can assure you. Indeed, if by any turn of luck I was in funds myself, I 'd like to redeem it. All I ask is, therefore, that you 'll not dispose of it, but hold it over in your own possession till the day--and I hope it may be an early one--it will be payable.” Cave was in no humor to dispute anything. There was no condition to which he would not have acceded, so heartily ashamed and abashed was he by the position in which he found himself. What he really would have liked best, would have been to refuse the bond altogether, and say, Pay when you like, how you like, or, better still, not at all. This of course was not possible, and he accepted the terms proposed to him at once.