It was the intention of Ellis, on leaving his house after breakfast, to repair to his store and make some preliminary arrangements for the day before hunting up Carlton; but on his way thither, his appetite constrained him to enter a certain drinking-house just for a single glass of brandy to give his nerves their proper tension.

“Ah! how are you, my boy?” exclaimed Carlton, who was there before him, advancing as he spoke, and offering his hand in his usual frank way.

“Glad to meet you!” returned Ellis.  “Just the man I wished to see.  Take a drink?”

“I don’t care if I do.”

And the two men moved up to the bar.  When they turned away, Carlton drew his arm familiarly within that of Ellis, and bending close to his ear, said—­“You wish to take up your due-bills, I presume?

“You guess my wishes precisely,” was the answer.

“Well, I shall be pleased to have you cancel them.  Are you prepared to do it this morning?”

“I am—­in the way they were created.”

A gleam of satisfaction lit up the gambler’s face, which was partly turned from Ellis; but he shrugged his shoulders, and said, in an altered voice—­“I’m most afraid to try you again.”

“We’re pretty well matched, I know,” said the victim.  “If you decline, of course the matter ends.”

“I never like to be bantered,” returned Carlton.  “If a man were to dare me to jump from the housetop, it would be as much as I could do to restrain myself.”

“I’ve got three hundred in my pocket,” said Ellis, “and I’m prepared to see the last dollar of it.”

“Good stuff in you, my boy!” and Carlton laid his hand upon his shoulder in a familiar way.  “It would hardly be fair not to give you a chance to get back where you were.  So here’s for you, win or lose, sink or swim.”

And the two men left the tavern together.  We need not follow them, nor describe the contest that ensued.  The result has already been anticipated by the reader.  A few hours sufficed to strip Ellis of his three hundred dollars, and increase his debts to the gambler nearly double the former amount.

CHAPTER XV.

Mrs. Ellis knew, by the appearance of her husband, that he had not been drinking on the night previous, late as he had remained away.  This took a weight from her feelings, and relieved her mind from self-upbraidings that would have haunted her all the day.  After breakfast her mind began to ponder what Mrs. Claxton had said on the day previous, and the more she thought of her advice and example, the more she felt inclined to adopt a similar course of action.  On new Brussels carpets she had, long ago, set her heart, and already worried her husband about them past endurance.  To obtain his consent to the purchase, she felt to be hopeless.

“I must get them in this way, or not at all.  So much is clear.”  Thus she communed with herself.  “He’s able enough to pay the bill; if I had any doubts of that, the matter would be settled; but I have none.”