After the first few months' excitement of his new life, David's conscience began to torment him anew. He became melancholy, then moody, and finally fell into the habit of sitting for hours among the crowds which swarmed the gambling rooms, brooding over his secret. From stage to stage in the evolution of his remorse he passed until he at last reached that of superstition, which attacks the soul of the gambler as rust does iron. And so the wretched victim of many vices sat one evening at the close of the second year with his hat drawn down over his eyes, reflecting upon his past. "What's the matter, Davy?" asked a player who had lost his stake, and was whistling good-humoredly as he left the room. "Nothing," he muttered. "Brace up, old man! There is no use taking life so hard! You've got everything, and I've got nothing; and I am happy and you are miserable. Brace up, I say!" And with that he slapped him familiarly on the shoulder. "Leave me alone," David growled, and reached for a glass mug containing a strong decoction to which he was resorting more and more as his troubles grew intolerable. A strange thing happened! As he put it to his lips its bottom dropped upon the table and the contents streamed into his lap and down to the floor. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, for it had aroused a superstitious terror. With a smothered cry he sprang to his feet and gazed around upon his companions. They, too, had observed the untoward accident, and to them as well as to him it was a symbol of disaster. Not one of them doubted that the bottom would fall out of his fortunes as out of his glass, for by such signs as these the gambler reads his destiny. He pulled himself together and made a jest of the accident, but it was impossible for him to dissipate the impression it had made on the minds of his companions or to banish the gloom from his own soul. And so after a few brave but futile efforts to break the spell of apprehension, he slipped quietly away, opened the door and passed out into the night. CHAPTER XX. THE INEVITABLE HOUR "How shall I lose the sin yet keep the sense, And love th' offender, yet detest the offense?" --Pope. After wandering aimlessly about the city for awhile the half-crazed gambler turned his footsteps toward home. He longed for and yet dreaded its quiet and repose. The forces of attraction and repulsion were so nearly balanced that for a long time he oscillated before his own door like a piece of iron hung between the opposite poles of a battery. At last he entered, both hoping and fearing that Pepeeta would be asleep. He had a vague presentiment that he was on the verge of some great event. The guilty secret so long hidden in the depths of his soul seemed to have festered its way dangerously near to the surface, and he felt that if anything more should happen to irritate him he might do something desperate.