The Squire soon forgot everything in playing. The old excitement came back; his cheeks got red, and his eyes grew bright, and he kept making jokes just as they say he used to do.
He had wonderful luck, for he won everything, and he was so excited he must have fancied himself back again at the club by the way he went on. When he had won they made the stakes higher, and he kept winning, till he had won quite a lot. The Colonel had bank-notes in his pocket and he paid them over, and presently he said—
“Look here, Stretford, I’ll play you double or quits the lot.”
The Squire was like a boy now. “All right,” he said; “come on.” He won, and the Colonel had to owe him a lot of money.
When the Squire was quite worked up the Colonel cried out, “A thousand!” He lost it. “Double or quits!” He lost again—and so on till he had lost a fortune: and then he pretended to be awfully wild, and brought his fist down on the table and shouted out, “Confound it, I’m not going to be beaten! I’ll play you the Hall against what you’ve won.”
I wish you could hear Mr. Wilkins tell the story as he told it to Harry and me in our bar parlour. He made us quite hot the way he described this game with the Colonel and the dying Squire, and he made it quite real, which I can’t do in writing. We were quite carried away, and I knew when it came to the Hall being staked, and Mr. Wilkins described the Squire sitting up, almost at death’s door, and laughing and shouting, and evidently carried away by “the ruling passion” (that’s what Mr. Wilkins called it), that he must have believed himself back again at his club and the devil-may-care fellow he was in those days.
“Done!” said the Squire.
And then they played for the old Hall that the Squire had lost ten years ago.
And the Squire won it!
As he won the game he flung the cards up in the air, and shouted out so loud that the landlady ran up, thinking he was in a fit or something.