When he reached his own gate he exchanged a quiet greeting with two men, who were evidently waiting for him.
Then all three went softly round to the back of the house, and entered it by the door through which Bet and little Miss Joy had gone in that afternoon.
Mr. Skinner opened the door with a latch-key, and all three men passed silently into the little room with the big table, covered with the green cloth--the table which little Joy had said looked too big for the room.
"Well," one of the men said, "'Fortune favours the brave.' I am in for luck to-night. What have you got to drink? I dare say there's a bottle of rum in the cupboard, eh?"
"Well," Mr. Skinner said, "I don't drink anything myself. So, no doubt, what you left is to be had."
"Ah, ha! ah, ha!" laughed the other man. "You don't drink at your own expense; is that it? The old lady in the row finds you in toddy."
"Shut up!" said the elder of the two men; "don't talk all night, but let us to business."
Then two packs of cards were produced with the black bottle, and very soon the game began.
Ah me! that ruinous game, which so many, I fear, play, and thereby lose all sense of honour and right. Who shall say how long is the list of broken hearts for which gambling is responsible?
And not only the sordid gambling, such as that in which Mr. Skinner and his boon companions indulged, with dirty packs of cards, in a low room where the mice scampered about behind the loose boards, and the whole aspect was uninviting; but, alas! there is the same game going on amongst those who, from education and social position, should be the first to shun this crying evil.
It matters not whether the stakes be for a pound or a penny, the danger and the sin is the same.
The winner is always the winner at the expense of the loser. The success of one is the destruction and misery of the other. Deceit and fraud, with too often strong drink to silence the cry of remorse and the voice of conscience, follow in the gambler's train. No departure from the paths of honesty is single in its consequences, and there is no sin but may be compared to the throwing of a pebble into a still lake, when the circles which follow the fall of the stone widen and widen, and that indefinitely.