Dr. Charles Harrison was a young man of twenty-five or six, a distant relative of the Barksdales—so distant indeed that he would never have known himself as a relative at all, if he and they had not been Virginians. He was a young man of good parts, fond of field sports, reasonably well behaved in all external matters, but without any very fixed moral principles. He was a gentleman, in the strict Virginian sense of the term. That is to say he was of a good family, was well educated, and had never done anything to disgrace himself; wherefore he was received in all gentlemen's houses as an equal. He drank a little too freely on occasion, and played bluff and loo a trifle too often, the elderly people thought; but these things, it was commonly supposed, were only youthful follies. He would grow out of them—marry and settle down after awhile. He was on the whole a very agreeable person to be with, and very much of a gentleman in his manner.

"Foggy" Raves was an anomaly. His precise position in the social scale was a very difficult thing to discover, and is still more difficult to define. His father had been an overseer, and so "Foggy" was certainly not a "gentleman." Other men of parentage similar to his knew their places, and when business made it necessary for them to visit the house of a gentleman they expected to be received in the porch if the weather were tolerable, and in the dining-room if it were not. They never dreamed of being taken into the parlor, introduced to the family, or invited to dinner. All these things were well recognized customs; the line of demarkation between "gentlemen" and "common people" was very sharply drawn indeed. The two classes lived on excellent terms with each other, but they never mixed. The gentleman was always courteous to the common people out of respect for himself; while the common people were very deferential to every gentleman as a matter of duty. Now this man Raves was not a "gentleman." That much was clear. And yet, for some inscrutable reason, his position among the people who knew him was not exactly that of a common man. He was never invited into gentlemen's houses precisely as a gentleman would have been, it is true; and yet into gentlemen's houses he very often went, and that upon invitation too. When young men happened to be keeping bachelors' establishments, either temporarily or permanently, "Foggy" was sure to be invited pretty frequently to see them. As long as there were no ladies at home "Foggy" knew himself welcome, and he had played whist and loo and bluff in many genteel parlors, into which he never thought of going when there were ladies on the plantation. He kept a fine pack of hounds too, and was clearly at the head of the "fox-hunting interest" of the county; and this was an anomaly also, as fox-hunting is an eminently aristocratic sport, in which gentlemen engage only in company with gentlemen—except in "Foggy's" case.

"FOGGY."

Precisely what "Foggy's" business was it is difficult to say. He was constable, for one thing, and ex-officio county jailor. One half the jail building was fitted up as his residence, and there he lived, a bachelor some fifty years old. He hired out horses and buggies in a small way now and then, but his earnings were principally made at "bluff" and "loo." Once or twice Colonel Barksdale and some other gentlemen had tried to oust "Foggy" from the jail, believing that his establishment there was ruining a good many of the young men, as it certainly was. Failing in this they had him indicted for gambling in a public place, but the prosecution failed, the court holding that the jailor's private rooms in the jail could not be called a public place, though all rooms in a hotel had been held public within the meaning of the statute.

This man's Christian name was not "Foggy," of course, though hardly anybody knew what it really was. He had won his sobriquet in early life by paying the professional gambler, Daniel K. Foggy, to teach him "how to beat roulette," and then winning his money back by putting his purchased knowledge to the proof at Daniel's own roulette table. Everybody agreed that "Foggy" was a good fellow. He would go far out of his way to oblige anybody, and, as was pretty generally agreed, had a good many of the instincts of a gentleman. He was not a professional gambler at all. He never kept a faro bank. He played cards merely for amusement, he said, and there was a popular tendency to believe his statement. The betting was simply to "make it interesting," and sometimes the play did grow very "interesting" indeed—interesting to the extent of several hundred dollars frequently.

Now only about a week before the morning on which Mr. Robert met Dr. Harrison, he had gone to the Court House for the purpose of calling upon the doctor. While there young Harrison had proposed that they go up to Foggy's, explaining that Foggy was "quite a character, whom you ought to know; not a gentleman, of course, but a good fellow as ever lived."

Upon going to Foggy's, Robert had found his cousin Ewing Pagebrook there playing cards. The boy—for he was not yet of age—was flushed and excited, and Robert saw at a glance that he had been losing heavily. On Robert's entrance he threw down his cards and declared himself tired of play.

"I'll arrange that, Foggy," said the boy, with a nod.

"O any time will do!" replied the other. "How d'ye do, Charley? Come in."

Dr. Charley introduced Robert, and the latter, barely recognizing Foggy's greeting, turned to Ewing and asked:

"What have you been doing, Ewing? Not gambling, I hope."

"O no! certainly not," said Foggy; "only a little game of draw-poker, ten cents ante."

"Well, but how much have you lost, Ewing?" asked Robert. "How much more than you can pay in cash, I mean? I see you haven't settled the score."

Ewing was inclined to resent his cousin's questioning, but his rather weak head was by no means a match for his cousin's strong one. This great hulking Robert Pagebrook was "big all over," Billy Barksdale had said. His will was law to most men when he chose to assert it strongly. He now took his cousin in hand, and made him confess to a debt of fifty dollars to the gambler. Then turning to Foggy he said:

"Mr. Raves, you have won all of this young man's money and fifty dollars more, it appears. Now, as I understand the matter, this fifty dollars is 'a debt of honor,' in gambling parlance, and so it must be paid. But you must acknowledge that you are more than a match for a mere boy, and you ought to 'give him odds.' I believe that is the correct phrase, is it not?"

"Yes, that's right; but how can you give odds in draw-poker?"

"I am going to show you, though I am certainly not acquainted with the mysteries of that game. You and he think he owes you fifty dollars. Now my opinion is that he owes you nothing, while you owe him the precise amount of cash you have won from him; and I propose to effect a compromise. The law of Virginia is pretty stringent, I believe, on the subject of gambling with people under age, and if I were disposed I could give you some trouble on that score. But I propose instead to pay you ten dollars—just enough to make a receipt worth while—and to take your receipt in full for the amount due. I shall then take my cousin home, and he can pay me at his leisure. Is that satisfactory, sir?"

Mr. Robert was in a towering rage, though his manner was as quiet as it is possible to conceive, and his voice was as soft and smooth as a woman's. Had Foggy been disposed to presume upon his antagonist's apparent calmness and to play the bully, he would unquestionably have got himself into trouble of a physical sort there and then. To speak plainly, Robert Pagebrook was quite prepared to punish the gambler with his fists, and would undoubtedly have made short work of it had Foggy provoked him with a word. But Foggy never quarreled. He knew his business too well for that. He never gave himself airs with gentlemen. He knew his place too well. He never got himself involved in any kind of disturbance which would attract attention to himself. He knew the consequences too well. He was always quiet, always deferential, always satisfied; and so, while he had no reason to anticipate the thrashing which Robert Pagebrook was aching to give him, he nevertheless was as complacent as possible in his reply to that gentleman.

"Why certainly, Mr. Pagebrook. I never meant to take the money at all. I only wanted to frighten our young friend here, and teach him a lesson. He thinks he can play cards when he can't, and I wanted to 'break him of sucking eggs,' that's all. I meant to let him think he had to pay me so as to scare him, for I feel an interest in Ewing. 'Pon my word I do. Now let me tell you, Ewing, we'll call this square, and you mustn't play no more. You play honest now, but if you keep on you'll cheat a little after awhile, and when a man cheats at cards, Ewing, he'll steal. Mind, I speak from experience, for I've seen a good deal of this thing. Come, Charley, you and Mr. Pagebrook, let's take something. I've got some splendid Shield's whisky."

Mr. Pagebrook summoned sufficient courtesy to decline the alcoholic hospitality without rudeness, and, with his cousin, took his leave.

Ewing entreated Robert to keep the secret he had thus stumbled upon, and Robert promised to do so upon the express condition that Ewing would wholly refrain from playing cards for money in future. This the youth promised to do, and our friend Robert congratulated himself upon his success in saving his well-meaning but rather weak-headed cousin from certain ruin.