“Well; people talk, and not always at random.  There’s been a man staying here, most of his time, for the last four or five years, named Green.  He does not do anything, and don’t seem to have any friends in the neighborhood.  Nobody knows where he came from, and he is not at all communicative on that head himself.  Well, this man became acquainted with young Hammond after Willy got to visiting the bar here, and attached himself to him at once.  They have, to all appearance, been fast friends ever since; riding about, or going off on gunning or fishing excursions almost every day, and secluding themselves somewhere nearly every evening.  That man, Green, sir, it is whispered, is a gambler; and I believe it.  Granted, and there is no longer a mystery as to what Willy does with his own and his father’s money.”

I readily assented to this view of the case.

“And so assuming that Green is a gambler,” said I, “he has grown richer, in consequence of the opening of a new and more attractive tavern in Cedarville.”

“Yes, and Cedarville is so much the poorer for all his gains; for I’ve never heard of his buying a foot of ground, or in any way encouraging productive industry.  He’s only a blood-sucker.”

“It is worse than the mere abstraction of money,” I remarked; “he corrupts his victims, at the same time that he robs them.”

“True.”

“Willy Hammond may not be his only victim,” I suggested.

“Nor is he, in my opinion.  I’ve been coming to this bar, nightly, for a good many years—­a sorry confession for a man to make, I must own,” he added, with a slight tinge of shame; “but so it is.  Well, as I was saying, I’ve been coming to this bar, nightly, for a good many years, and I generally see all that is going on around me.  Among the regular visitors are at least half a dozen young men, belonging to our best families—­who have been raised with care, and well educated.  That their presence here is unknown to their friends, I am quite certain—­or, at least, unknown and unsuspected by some of them.  They do not drink a great deal yet; but all try a glass or two.  Toward nine o’clock, often at an earlier hour, you will see one and another of them go quietly out of the bar, through the sitting-room, preceded, or soon followed, by Green and Slade.  At any hour of the night, up to one or two, and sometimes three o’clock, you can see light streaming through the rent in a curtain drawn before a particular window, which I know to be in the room of Harvey Green.  These are facts, sir; and you can draw your own conclusion.  I think it a very serious matter.”

“Why does Slade go out with these young men?” I inquired.  “Do you think he gambles also?”

“If he isn’t a kind of a stool-pigeon for Harvey Green, then I’m mistaken again.”

“Hardly.  He cannot, already, have become so utterly unprincipled.”

“It’s a bad school, sir, this tavern-keeping,” said the man.