that account; and, moreover, had no rival to divide the pool with him.

"I would give five pounds if somebody would beat him," muttered the
discontented parson within Yorke's hearing, who was standing aloof with
his cigar watching the game.

"I think I _could_," said the young man, quietly, "if I _had_ five
pounds."

As the pool was two pounds, and the lives were one, this was exactly the
amount of pecuniary risk to be run, and which want of the necessary
funds had alone prevented the young man from incurring.

"Here is a fiver," replied the parson, softly.

"But I really have no money," remonstrated Yorke, though his fine face
lit up for a moment with delight (for he was a gambler to the core),
"nor any expectation of--"

"Yes, yes; you have expectations enough," answered the other, hurriedly.
"You may give me that living yet yourself--who knows? Take a ball,
man--take a ball."

So, when another game commenced, the young landscape-painter, who had
spent at least as much of his short life at those boards of green cloth
called "public tables" as in studying the verdant hues of nature, made
one of the combatants, and not a little astonished them by his
performance. He had the eye of a hawk, with the litheness of a young
panther; and his prudence during the late debauch had preserved his
steadiness of hand. Mr. Theodore Fane had the misfortune to be his