“The cards pass,” said the banker again; “you see you would have won, sir. How much do you put up now?”
The young man glanced fiercely at the speaker, hesitated an instant, and half turned away again; but the temptation to try his luck once more was too great, and hastily throwing down his dollar, he grasped the cards convulsively.
“Twenty!” said the banker, flinging his cards with a smile on the table. “Sir, you have lost.”
The young man stared wildly at the hoary villain, and then grinding his teeth together fiercely, with ill-concealed despair, he pushed the piece towards his tempter, cast a stern defying glance around the room at the curious spectators of the scene, and strode from the apartment.
“Humph!” said the banker, “I’ll bet it’s his last dollar—who takes me up? No one, eh! Then, gentlemen, proceed.”
No sooner had the young man reached the street than he paused, and looking up at the gay windows of the room he had left, he shook his clenched hand fiercely at them, and exclaimed—
“Curses on ye for the ruin ye have brought upon me!—ay! ten thousand curses on ye and your hoary owners!” and then the recollection of his poverty seeming to cross his mind in another guise, he added, less passionately, “My God! not a cent have they left me, even to buy a night’s shelter. Oh! that I had never left my father’s house!”
For hours he wandered up and down the streets, now inflamed to madness by his despair, now melting at the recollection of the happy days he had once enjoyed under his father’s roof. Morning still found him a wanderer. Pale, dejected and spirit-broken, he entered, at early dawn, an obscure coffee-house, just as the sleepy menials were opening the shutters, and sitting moodily down, picked up the morning paper. The first paragraph that his eye lit upon was as follows:
“Died, on the 5th inst., after a lingering illness, which she bore with Christian meekness and fortitude, Elizabeth, wife of George L. Vernon.”
The paper dropped from his grasp. For an instant all power of speech left him. Then rushed across his mind the recollection of a thousand things which that mother had done for her erring boy. And she had died—died without forgiving him! Oh! at that moment, he would have given worlds to have recalled her to life, in order that he might kneel at her feet and solicit her pardon.