A few men heard his story and helped him—one Northern man had given him employment; his gratitude was defalcation.

To day he has sounded Hugenot; but that man of sentiment alluded to the business habits of his ancestry, and intimated that he did not lend.

"Ou-ah cause, Andy," he says, with a flourish, "is[Pg 24] now negotiating a loan. When ou-ah beloved country is reduced to such straits, that she must borow from strangers, I cannot think of relieving private indigence."

[Pg 24]

Later in the day, however, Mr. Plade made the acquaintance of an ingenuous youth from Pennsylvania, and obtaining a hundred francs, for one day only, sent it straightway to Mr. Auburn Risque.

A second meeting was held at Lees' the third day noon, when the originator of the "system" sat icily grim behind a table whereon eleven hundred francs reposed; and the whole colony, crowding breathlessly around, was amazed to note how little the space taken up by so great a sum.

They opened a crevice that Lees might be gladdened with the sight of the gold; for to-day that invalid was unusually dispirited, and could not quit his bed.

"We are down very low, old Simp," said Pisgah, smilingly, "when either the possession or the loss of that amount can be an event in our lives."

"You will laugh that it was so, a week hence," answered Auburn Risque—"when you lunch at Peters' while awaiting my third check for a thousand dollars apiece."

"I don't believe in the system," growled Lees, opening a cold draft from his melancholy eyes: "I don't feel that I shall ever spend a sou of the winnings. No more will any of you. There will be no winnings to spend. Auburn Risque will lose. He always does."

"If you were standing by at the play I should," cried Risque, while the pock-marks in his face were[Pg 25] like the thawings of ice. "You would croak like an old raven, and I should forget my reckoning."

[Pg 25]

"Come now, Lees," cried all the others; "you must not see bad omen for the Colony;" and they said, in undertone, that Lees had come to be quite a bore.

They were all doubtful, nevertheless. Their crisis could not be exaggerated. Their interest was almost devout. Three thousand miles 

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