Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/342

 "No," I answered, "I did not know him except as my fellow-traveller from Charleston; I should like very well to know his name."

"As to his name," said my mulatto friend, "it would not be so easy to tell that. He goes by a good many names. Most every time he comes this way he has a new one. Have a care of him, master; he's a gambler. I thought I'd tell you, lest you might get cheated by him."

As this information seemed to come from pure good will on the part of my informant, I had no reason to distrust its correctness. I knew very well that gambling was not only practised in these southern slave states, as it is in the overgrown capitals of Europe, as a means of relieving the ennui of idleness, but that here, as there, a regular class of professional gamblers had sprung into existence, who lived by fleecing the unskilful and unwary. It was by no means unusual for members of that fraternity to have all the external marks of gentlemen; nor was there any improbability in the suggestion that my new acquaintance belonged to it.

Though he had inclined to differ, in the course of the morning, from our two northern companions on some questions of politics and morality, I could not but admire the grace and art with which he contrived, in the course of the afternoon, to worm himself into their confidence. When the stage coach stopped, for the night, at another tavern still more dirty, uncomfortable, and every way untidy, — if that could well be, — than the one at which we had dined, he proposed, after supper, a game of cards by way of whiling away the time. he other two were ready enough for it, and the three were soon busy at the game, in which they were joined by one or two planters of the vicinity, who happened to be lounging about the house. For myself, I positively declined to join them, declaring that I never touched a card, and never played at any game for money; and perceiving from my manner that I was quite inflexible on that point,