excesses,--a reckless gambler among speculators, a hopeless speculator
among gamblers, until the little fortune he had brought thither had been
swept away.

From time to time he had kept up his failing spirit with the feverish
exaltation of dissipation, until, awakening from a drunkard's dream one
morning, he had found himself on board a steamboat crossing the bay, in
company with a gang of farm laborers with whom he was hired. A bitter
smile crossed his lips as his eyes hovered over the cold, rugged fields
before him. Yet he knew that they had saved him. The unaccustomed manual
labor in the open air, the regular hours, the silent, heavy, passionless
nights, the plain but wholesome food, were all slowly restoring his
youth and strength again. Temptation and passion had alike fled these
unlovely fields and grim employment. Yet he was not grateful. He nursed
his dreary convalescence as he had his previous dissipation, as part of
a wrong done him by one for whose sake, he was wont to believe, he had
sacrificed himself. That person was a woman.

Turning at last from the prospect and his bitter memories to join his
companions, he found that they had all passed in. The benches before the
long table on which supper was spread were already filled, and he stood
in hesitation, looking down the line of silent and hungrily preoccupied
men on either side. A young girl, who was standing near a smaller
serving-table, apparently assisting an older woman in directing the
operation of half a dozen Chinese waiters, moved forward and cleared a
place for him at a side-table, pushing before it the only chair in the
room,--the one she had lately vacated. As she placed some of the dishes
before him with a timid ostentation, and her large but well-shaped hands
came suddenly in contact with, and in direst contrast to his own whiter
and more delicate ones, she blushed faintly. He lifted his eyes to hers.