this evil-minded parson was in debt. Every other man you met had a bill
against the Reverend David Poindexter in his pocket; and as the day
wore on, and still no tidings of the missing man were received,
individuals of the sheriff and bailiff species began to be
distinguishable amid the crowd. But the great sensation was yet to
come. How the report started no one knew, but toward supper-time it
passed from mouth to mouth that Mr. Harwood Courtney, in the course of
his twenty-four hours of picquet with Poindexter, had won from the
latter not his ready money alone, but the entire property and estates
that had accrued to him as nearest of kin to the late David Lambert.
And it was added that, as the debt was a gambling transaction, and
therefore not technically recoverable by process of law, Mr. Courtney
was naturally very anxious for his debtor to put in an appearance. Now
it so happened that this report, unlike many others ostensibly more
plausible, was true in every particular.

Probably there was more gossip at the supper-tables of Witton that
night than in any other town of ten times the size in the United
Kingdom; and it was formally agreed that Poindexter had escaped to the
Continent, and would either remain in hiding there, or take passage by
the first opportunity to the American colonies, or the United States,
as they had now been called for some years past. Nobody defended the
reverend apostate, but, on the other hand, nobody pretended to be sorry
for Mr. Harwood Courtney; it was generally agreed that they had both of
them got what they deserved. The only question was, What was to become
of the property? Some people said it ought to belong to Edith Saltine;
but of course poetical justice of that kind was not to be expected.

Edith, meanwhile, had kept herself strictly secluded. She was the last
person who had seen David Poindexter, but she had mentioned the fact to