He knew himself to be a man disgraced, and
when he had fled from London he had gone under the conviction that he
would certainly never return. There were the pistol and bullet as his
last assured resource; but a certain amount of good-fortune had awaited
him,--enough to save him from having recourse to their aid. His brother
had supplied him with small sums of money, and from time to time a
morsel of good luck had enabled him to gamble, not to his heart's
content, but still in some manner so as to make his life bearable. But
now he was back in his own country, and he could gamble not at all, and
hardly even see those old companions with whom he had lived. It was not
only for the card-tables that he sighed, but for the companions of the
card-table. And though he knew that he had been scratched out from the
lists of all clubs as a dishonest man, he knew also, or thought that he
knew, that he had been as honest as the best of those companions. As
long as he could by any possibility raise money he had paid it away,
and by no false trick had he ever endeavored to get it back again.
Had a little time been allowed him all would have been paid; and all had
been paid. He knew that by the rules of such institutions time could not
be granted; but still he did not feel himself to have been a dishonest
man.
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