of his brother's innocence. The sincerity and strength of this
conviction he shortly afterwards proved in a manner which produced the
catastrophe of my story.

Before, however, I enter upon my immediate adventures, I ought to
relate the circumstances which had awakened that suspicion to which
I have referred, inasmuch as they are in themselves somewhat
curious, and in their effects most intimately connected with my own
after-history.

My uncle, Sir Arthur Tyrrell, was a gay and extravagant man, and,
among other vices, was ruinously addicted to gaming. This unfortunate
propensity, even after his fortune had suffered so severely as to
render retrenchment imperative, nevertheless continued to engross him,
nearly to the exclusion of every other pursuit. He was, however, a
proud, or rather a vain man, and could not bear to make the diminution
of his income a matter of triumph to those with whom he had hitherto
competed; and the consequence was, that he frequented no longer the
expensive haunts of his dissipation, and retired from the gay world,
leaving his coterie to discover his reasons as best they might. He
did not, however, forego his favourite vice, for though he could
not worship his great divinity in those costly temples where he was
formerly wont to take his place, yet he found it very possible to
bring about him a sufficient number of the votaries of chance to
answer all his ends. The consequence was, that Carrickleigh, which
was the name of my uncle's residence, was never without one or more of
such visiters as I have described. It happened that upon one occasion
he was visited by one Hugh Tisdall, a gentleman of loose, and, indeed,
low habits, but of considerable wealth, and who had, in early youth,
travelled with my uncle upon the Continent. The period of this visit