SCENE IN A GAMBLING HOUSE.

Southland Times, Issue 982, 8 July 1868, Page 3

SCENE IN A GAMBLING HOUSE.

(From Dickens's "All the YearKouna. Some evening, after three or four flasks of wine, the Deluder pretends with his own jovial laugh, to be tired of Garrick and Quin, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of the Mall and the fencing-school, of the masquerade and the park. Some people they meet by chance at Will's turn out very lively acquaintances, with a turn for faro or chicken-hazard. They adjourn to a gambling- house, and set to work with the dice and the red and black pips. Mr Littlebrain, the rich young gentleman from Somersetshire, at first wins surprisingly. The gold tide sets in towards him. They call for more Burgundy. He insists on higher stakes, astonished to find how he is startling the old diceshakers of Covent Garden. More Burgundy, the room seems to get lighter and larger, the dice fly out faster and faster. The tide at last turns — the gold floats from him in shoals. He has now lost all he had won, and five thousand guineas more, besides the large farm near Taunton. He has also signed some papers that a good-natured old lawyer present requires as securities for the loan of another thousand, already half gone. Gradually the fumes of the wine subside, and one suspicious glance discloses to him the old lawyer changing a p ack of cards which he (novice) had placed ready at his elbow. He sees a friend make signs to the benevolent lawyer. Then he feels into what a pack of wolves he has fallen. In a moment Littlebrain dashes over the chair, leaps on the settee, gets down his hat and sword from the peg behind the door, and shouted " Theives !" from the window to the watch, who have just passed, crying sleepily " Past four, and a rainy morning." The gang is furious, their eyes glare, they prepare for a stampede. Tbe gallant captain, whose red face, barred with black plaister, looks like a hot fire seen between the bars of a grate, sweeps two or three dozen guineas from the green cloth into his panniers of pockets. Then some one knocks out the lights, several swords clash^jwitlL-liittlfl--_i>^^<.,-»xxa-x7rio-paßseB _ tlirough -his unlucky body. He staggers to the stairs, and falls headlong down them — dead; There is a dash at the watchmen, who threaten the gamblers with their staves. The old men, however, fall before the tempestuous charge, and the next moment there is no one in the gambling-house, but two frightened women, an old watchman, who is holding the dim lantern to the dead man's face with one hand and removing his watch and purse with the other ; the only sound is the wind whistling through the keyhole.