His establishment was now all but closed; the two apprentices had scarcely anything to do, and, indeed, generally amused themselves in the workshop by playing Spoil Five—­a fact which was discovered by Art himself, who came on them unexpectedly one day when tipsy; but, as he happened to be in an extremely good humor, he sat down and took a hand along with them.  This was a new element of enjoyment to him, and instead of reproving them for their dishonest conduct, he suffered himself to be drawn into the habit of gambling, and so strongly did this grow upon him, that from henceforth he refused to participate in any drinking bout unless the parties were to play for the liquor.  For this he had now neither temper nor coolness; while drinking upon the ordinary plan with his companions, he almost uniformly paid the reckoning from sheer vanity; or, in other words, because they managed him; but now that it depended upon what he considered to be skill, nothing ever put him so completely out of temper as to be put in for it.  This low gambling became a passion with him; but it was a passion that proved to be the fruitful cause of fights and quarrels without end.  Being seldom either cool or sober, he was a mere dupe in the hands of his companions; but whether by fair play or foul, the moment he perceived that the game had gone against him, that moment he generally charged his opponents with dishonesty and fraud, and then commenced a fight.  Many a time has he gone home, beaten and bruised, and black, and cut, and every way disfigured in these vile and blackguard contests; but so inveterately had this passion for card-playing—­that is, gambling for liquor—­worked itself upon him, that he could not suffer a single day to pass without indulging in it.  Defeat of any kind was a thing he could never think of; but for a Maguire—­one of the great Fermanagh Maguires—­to be beaten at a rascally game of Spoil Five, was not to be endured; the matter was impossible, unless by foul play, and as there was only one method of treating those who could stoop to the practice of foul play, why he seldom lost any time in adopting it.  This was to apply the fist, and as he had generally three or four against him, and as, in most instances, he was in a state of intoxication, it usually happened that he received most punishment.

Up to this moment we have not presented Art to our readers in any other light than that of an ordinary drunkard, seen tipsy and staggering in the streets, or singing as he frequently was, or fighting, or playing cards in the public-houses.  Heretofore he was not before the world, and in everybody’s eye; but he had now become so common a sight in the town of Ballykeerin, that his drunkenness was no longer a matter of surprise to its inhabitants.  At the present stage of his life he could not bear to see his brother Frank; and his own Margaret, although unchanged and. loving as ever, was no longer to him the Margaret that she had been.  He felt how much he had despised