all-expectant, eye the coming trump. With what anxious nicety do they
arrange their cards, jealous of each other's eyes! Why is that lean
doctor so slow,--cadaverous man with hollow jaw and sunken eye, ill
beseeming the richness of his mother church! Ah, why so slow, thou
meagre doctor? See how the archdeacon, speechless in his agony,
deposits on the board his cards, and looks to heaven or to the ceiling
for support. Hark, how he sighs, as with thumbs in his waistcoat
pocket he seems to signify that the end of such torment is not yet
even nigh at hand! Vain is the hope, if hope there be, to disturb
that meagre doctor. With care precise he places every card,
weighs well the value of each mighty ace, each guarded king, and
comfort-giving queen; speculates on knave and ten, counts all his
suits, and sets his price upon the whole. At length a card is led,
and quick three others fall upon the board. The little doctor leads
again, while with lustrous eye his partner absorbs the trick. Now
thrice has this been done,--thrice has constant fortune favoured
the brace of prebendaries, ere the archdeacon rouses himself to the
battle; but at the fourth assault he pins to the earth a prostrate
king, laying low his crown and sceptre, bushy beard, and lowering
brow, with a poor deuce.

"As David did Goliath," says the archdeacon, pushing over the four
cards to his partner. And then a trump is led, then another trump;
then a king,--and then an ace,--and then a long ten, which brings
down from the meagre doctor his only remaining tower of strength--his
cherished queen of trumps.

"What, no second club?" says the archdeacon to his partner.

"Only one club," mutters from his inmost stomach the pursy rector, who