"It is sure to break the bank in time," he said confidently, "I am for going to Paris where play runs high, and need not be carried on in this hole and corner fashion to suit cursed Puritanical ideas."
"Tell me your secret, Walterton," urged worthy Sir Michael, whose broad Shropshire acres were heavily mortgaged, after the rapine and pillage of civil war.
"Well! I can but tell you part, my friend," rejoined the other, "yet 'tis passing simple. You begin with one golden guinea . . . and lose it . . . then you put up two and lose again. . . ."
"Passing simple," assented Sir Michael ironically.
"But after that you put up four guineas."
"And lose it."
"Yea! yea! mayhap you lose it . . . but then you put up eight guineas . . . and win. Whereupon you are just as you were before."
And with a somewhat unsteady hand the young man raised a bumper to his lips, whilst eying Sir Michael with the shifty and inquiring eye peculiar to the intoxicated.
"Meseems that if you but abstain from playing altogether," quoth Sir Michael impatiently, "the result would still be the same. . . . And suppose you lose the eight guineas, what then?"
"Oh! 'tis vastly simple—you put up sixteen."