"Which is not the less valuable," broke he in, "because he who gave it is himself a paid spy of the police."
I started, and he went on.
"Yes, it is perfectly true; and the advice he gave you was both good and well intended. These men who act as the croupiers are always in the pay of the police. Their position affords them the very best and safest means of obtaining information; they see everybody, and they hear an immensity of gossip. Still, it is not their interest that the English, who form the great majority of play-victims, should be excluded from places of gambling resort. With them, they would lose a great part of their income; for this reason he gave you that warning, and it is by no means to be despised or undervalued."
At length we parted,—he to return over the mountain to his cottage, and I to continue my way to the hotel.
"At least promise me one thing," said he, as he shook my hand: "you 'll not venture down yonder to-night;" and he pointed to the great building where the play went forward, now brilliant in all its illumination.
"That's easily done," said I, laughing, "if you mean as regards play."
"It is as regards play, I say it," replied he; "for the rest, I suppose you'll not incur much hazard."
"I say that the pledge costs little sacrifice; I have no money to wager."
"All the better, at least for the present. My advice to you would be, take your rod, or, if you haven't one, take one of mine, and set out for a week or ten days up the valley of the 'Moorg.' You'll have plenty of fishing, pretty scenery, and, above all, quiet and tranquillity to compose your mind and recover your faculties after all this fevered excitement."
He continued to urge this plan upon me with considerable show of reason, and such success that as I shook his hand for the last time it was in a promise to carry out the scheme. He'd have gone with me himself, he said, but that he could not leave his mother even for a few days; and, indeed, this I scarcely regretted, because, to own the honest fact, my dear Bob, I felt that there was a terrible gulf between us in fifty matters of thought and opinion; and, what was worse, I saw that he was more often in the right than myself. Now, wise notions of life, prudent resolves, and sage aphorisms are certain to come some time or other to everybody; but I 'd as soon think of "getting up" wrinkles and crows'-feet as of assuming them at one-and-twenty. I know, at least, that's Tiverton's theory; and he, it can't be denied, does understand the world as well as most men. Not that I do not like Morris; on the contrary, I am sure he is an excellent fellow, and worthy of all respect, but somehow he does n't "go along," Bob; he's—as we used to say of a clumsy horse in heavy ground—"he's sticky." But I'm not going to abuse him, and particularly at the moment when I am indebted to his friendship.