In the summer season he beguiled his time on the river, or migrated with the fashionables to Pascagoula, or a more northern watering-place,—­in fine, to any sphere which afforded him a theatre for the exercise of his talents as a blackleg.  Wherever he was, he never passed by an opportunity to obtain possession of his neighbor’s valuables.  If the monied man would accept a hand at euchre or poker, why, he was so much the easier cleaned out; if not, false keys, pick-locks, or sleight-of-hand, soon relieved the unfortunate victim of his superfluous possessions.

Early in his career of fashionable dissipation, Maxwell had made the acquaintance of this notorious individual.  Indeed, he had sufficient cause to remember him, for he had made a deep inroad into his patrimony.  Maxwell was too great a rascal himself to be long duped by a greater one.  A kind of business intimacy had grown up between them, and continued to exist at the time of our story.  This connection was not, however, publicly acknowledged by Maxwell; it would have been the ruin of his fine prospects:  but he used him whenever a scheme of profit or revenge required an unscrupulous confederate.  Yet this Vernon was by no means a dependent creature of Maxwell’s, for he was bold, reckless, and independent to the last degree.  Whether acting as the paid devil of another, or on his own responsibility, he bowed to no power but his own will.  His physical courage was well known to be of the most obstinate character.  When the coward dandy had an enemy to punish, Vernon, for a hundred dollars, would first insult and then fight the luckless individual.  This had formerly been a lucrative part of his trade; but latterly his claims to the distinction of gentleman and man of honor had been of such a questionable character, that the man who refused to meet him did not lose caste among the bloods of the city.

Vernon was now on his way to a wider sphere of action than New Orleans, with its yellow fever season at hand, afforded him.  As usual, he practised his arts on board the Chalmetta, which, however, afforded him but a narrow field, the passengers being mostly officers, who had left their pay in the cabarets of Mexico.

By some means he had ascertained that Henry Carroll was in possession of a considerable sum of money.  By all the arts in his power he had endeavored to lure him to the gambling-table, which was constantly spread in the cabin, and surrounded by unfortunate victims, vainly striving against the coolness and trickery of professional blacklegs, to recruit their exhausted finances, or retrieve the ruin to which an unlucky hour had enticed them.  Henry obstinately refused to take a hand; but Vernon’s heart was set upon the bag of gold he knew was in Henry’s trunk, and he resolved to possess it,—­a feat not easy to accomplish on board a crowded steamer.