CHAPTER XX.
A BASE PLOT, AND WHAT IT LED TO.
"I say, Bill, I have a pretty good lay for you, and I think you can work it without much risk."
The speaker was Chappell, and the person whom he addressed was
Lawrence.
We, in the preceding chapter, introduced these worthies into this story, but as we wish our readers to become more thoroughly acquainted with them, will now give them a more formal introduction.
Moses Chappell was the son of highly respectable parents, and had the advantages that are ever associated with a home where there is comparative wealth, culture, and purity. He had a fair education, possessed a fine person and a gracious, polished manner.
When quite a young man he commenced the study of law with a firm in the city, but he became so unsteady in his habits that it took him a year or two longer to get through than the course required. When he became an attorney,—it being immediately after the close of the war,—he, through the influence of his friends, secured the position of claim agent; and as there were a great many soldiers who had claims for extra bounty and for pensions to prosecute, it was not long before he secured a large share of this business.
It was just after he had entered into business on his own responsibility that he became acquainted with Ashton. At that time he was simply looked upon as a rather fast young man, who would take a glass with a friend, and, as the boys would say, "just once in a while get a little 'O be joyful!'" But among this class he passed as a "Jolly good fellow!"
During the last year his degeneracy had been very rapid, and he had become almost a confirmed drunkard, it being well known by the initiated that he indulged in the passion of gambling, by which he lost a great deal of money.
A short time before Ashton's return to Rochester, Chappell's losses were, for him, very large indeed; and as his income failed to meet his liabilities, he took the money which he had collected from the Government for his clients, to meet his gambling debts, and also to make new ventures, with the hope that he would win back all his losses. But, as he expressed it, luck seemed to have turned against him, and he lost in one night, by wild, reckless play, hundreds of dollars that he had drawn for poor, wounded, and disabled men, many of whom had expended quite a sum in instituting their claim, and sadly needed it, because they had undermined their constitutions in the campaigns through which they had passed; some of them having wives and children depending upon them for support. In fact, no one knows what disappointment and misery was caused by the dishonest and reckless conduct of this now abandoned young man.