Mr.Aaron Cohen held the bank at roulette against some twenty or thirty of his friends, mostly young fellows with no wits and plenty of money.

'The Bank' was winning heavily, and it appears that this was the third consecutive night on which Mr.Aaron Cohen had gone home richer by several hundreds than he had been at the start of play.
"Young John Ashley, who is the son of a very worthy county gentleman who is M.F.H.somewhere in the Midlands, was losing heavily, and in his case also it appears that it was the third consecutive night that Fortune had turned her face against him.
"Remember," continued the man in the corner, "that when I tell you all these details and facts, I am giving you the combined evidence of several witnesses, which it took many days to collect and to classify.
"It appears that young Mr.Ashley, though very popular in society, was generally believed to be in what is vulgarly termed 'low water'; up to his eyes in debt, and mortally afraid of his dad, whose younger son he was, and who had on one occasion threatened to ship him off to Australia with a L5 note in his pocket if he made any further extravagant calls upon his paternal indulgence.
"It was also evident to all John Ashley's many companions that the worthy M.F.H.held the purse-strings in a very tight grip.

The young man, bitten with the desire to cut a smart figure in the circles in which he moved, had often recourse to the varying fortunes which now and again smiled upon him across the green tables in the Harewood Club.
"Be that as it may, the general consensus of opinion at the Club was that young Ashley had changed his last 'pony' before he sat down to a turn of roulette with Aaron Cohen on that particular night of February 6th.
"It appears that all his friends, conspicuous among whom was Mr.Walter Hatherell, tried their very best to dissuade him from pitting his luck against that of Cohen, who had been having a most unprecedented run of good fortune.

But young Ashley, heated with wine, exasperated at his own bad luck, would listen to no one; he tossed one L5 note after another on the board, he borrowed from those who would lend, then played on parole for a while.

Finally, at half-past one in the morning, after a run of nineteen on the red, the young man found himself without a penny in his pockets, and owing a debt--gambling debt--a debt of honour of L1500 to Mr.Aaron Cohen.
"Now we must render this much maligned gentleman that justice which was persistently denied to him by press and public alike; it was positively asserted by all those present that Mr.Cohen himself repeatedly tried to induce young Mr.Ashley to give up playing.