went round again. I did not watch the play; the wild, attentive faces were enough for me; and so it was that I saw a bedizened beauty go mad before my eyes. It was the madness of utter ecstasy--wails of laughter and happy maledictions--and then for that unopened magnum! By the neck, she caught it, whirled it about her like an Indian club, then down on the table with all her might and the effect of a veritable shell. A ribbon of blood ran down her dress as she recoiled, and the champagne flooded the green board like bubbling ink; but the old croupier hardly looked up from the pile of notes and gold that he was counting out with his sly, wintry smile.

"You saw she had a fiver on the number? You may watch roulette many a long night without seeing that again!"

It was Delavoye whispering as he dragged me away. He was the cool one now. Too excitable for me in the early stages of our adventure, he was not only the very man for all the rest, but a living lesson in just that thing or two I felt at first I could have taught him. For I fear I should have felled that butler if he had seen us in the cigar cellar, and I know I shouted when the magnum burst; but fortunately so did everybody else except Delavoye and the aged croupier.

"I suppose he was the butler?" I said when we had skirted the shallow drive, avoiding a couple of hansoms that stood there with the cabmen snug inside.

"What! The old fogey? Not he!" cried Delavoye as we reached the road. "I say, don't those hansoms tell us all about his pals!"

"But who was he?"

"The man himself."

"Not Sir Christopher Stainsby?"

"I'm afraid so--the old sinner!"

"But you said he was an old saint?"

"So I thought he was; my lord warden of the Nonconformist conscience, I always heard."

"Then how do you account for it?"

"I can't. I haven't thought about it. Wait a bit!"

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