"I give you one minute, and then I come in. You will open it, if you wish to save trouble."
Nicholls yielded to his fate: and opened the door.
The gentleman—he looked like one—cast his keen eyes round the room. There was not a vestige of furniture in it; nothing but the bare dirty walls, from which the mortar crumbled, and the bare dirty boards.
"What did you mean by saying you were gone to bed, eh?"
"So I was. I was asleep there," pointing to the corner, "and that's my bed. What do you want?" added Nicholls, peering at the stranger's face in the gloom of the evening, but seeing it imperfectly, for his hat was drawn low over it.
"A little talk with you. That last sweepstake you put into——"
The man lifted his face, and burst forth with such eagerness that the stranger could only arrest his own words and listen.
"It was a swindle from beginning to end. I had scraped together the ten shillings to put in it; and I drew the right horse, and was shuffled out of the gains, and I have never had my dues; not a farthing of 'em. Since then I've been ill, and I can't get about to better myself. Are you come, sir, to make it right?"
"Some"—the stranger coughed—"friends of mine were in it also," said he: "and they lost their money."
"Everybody lost it; the getters-up bolted with all they had drawn into their fingers. Have they been took, do you know?"